Re: New VGA console coming

[James S. <jsi...@ac...>]

Sorry I have been away but I was sick. 

> The console layer handles the glyph information to be displayed using full
> UNICODE-2.0 (or it's successor, the ISO norm for 32bit character codes).

Same here. By the way I have expanded the conmakehash.c program to
generate a unicode->font map of up to 65,536 characters. 

> Using the font and attribute information, this is translated into a
> font-specific code, which is stored in the shadow buffer using a pattern
> defined by the graphics driver only. Then the graphics driver does the
> rendering from the shadow buffer, it never gets involved with the
> glyph-code -> font position translation. This way it is up to the graphics
> driver, which attributes and how many font characters it supports.

So the shadow buffer is driver specific. Couldn't the shadow buffer get
really huge for some types of hardware ? I do realize that my idea of
making the shadow buffer a unicode buffer will not work since you might
need more than one unicode to make one characters. So it has a be some
type of glyph index. Do you use a seperate attribute buffer then?

MS: (n) 1. A debilitating and surprisingly widespread affliction that
renders the sufferer barely able to perform the simplest task. 2. A disease.

James Simmons  [jsi...@li...]               ____/| 
fbdev/console/gfx developer                             \ o.O| 
http://www.linux-fbdev.org                               =(_)= 
http://linuxgfx.sourceforge.net                            U
http://linuxconsole.sourceforge.net