Re: Unicode console font

[Yann Dirson <ydirson@multimania.com>]

Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl writes:
 > > I found some info on http://www.multimania.com/ydirson/en/lct/
 > 
 > Ah, interesting - thanks for the pointer!
 > I just looked for a moment and didnt find any specs for xpsf,
 > only the statement that it was being designed and that the
 > specs now are in docbook.
 > Do you have a more precise URL?

I did not put it online yet, it's in a quite unconsistent state now,
but you can have a look at it in the doc/file-formats/ dir in the
console-tools (development) source tree.


 > [It is a beautiful site, but I do not look at it with pleasure.

Well, I do not really look with pleasure either at the fact that we
still develop on packages with similar goals, thus perhaps duplicating
part of the job, but the events which occured during the last 2 years
do not seem to tend towards a unified package...


 > "Many bugs in kbd?" - Which ones?
 > Why does nobody report them? Reported bugs tend to get fixed within hours.]
 >
 > Let me cc Yann.
 > By some coincidence the next kbd release is planned for
 > tomorrow or perhaps the day after. (Yesterday was util-linux-2.9x.
 > This evening will be for a kernel patch to handle 34+ GB disks.)
 > 
 > Yann: In case you know about bugs in kbd-* I would like to hear
 > about them, instead of just reading on some web page that kbd is
 > full of them.

Well, the answer is not quite direct, as you will see, but I
hope it will help clarifying the situation a bit.  I now have some
troubles telling from my Changelog which bugs apply to kbd too, and
the lack of a Changelog file in kbd (already mentionned 2 years ago,
with no result) does not help me there to corelate.  See below a list
of Changelog entries which may apply.

I must say you were always prompt to accept updated data files -
although the kbd release rate is quite slow - , but as I remember you
were never really responsive to code patches I have sent you[1].  This
has really discouraged me from spending time on investigating possible
bugs in kbd.

As for the "kbd is full of bugs" part, I suppose it refers to the "it
fixes many bugs kbd has" statement in the lct.sgml document.  Whether
exact or not, I agree it brings not much to the text, so I gladly
remove it.  You may soon see the change on the online version.


[1] this is to be tracked back to October '97 at least
according to the console-tools Changelog, when I proposed you to help,
and when you declined, and till June '98 when I sent you a patch for
autoconf support, which could have been the first of a series to
incorporate console-tools things into kbd, for which I'm still waiting
for feedback


 > In case you do not know about bugs in kbd-0.99 (as opposed to
 > "missing features") I would like you to remove that sentence.
 > There is more I dislike on that page, but let us go one step at a time.

As always, I welcome constructive comments.


Potentially relevant Changelog entries [I omit some which I remember
were fixed, and only looked at '97 entries, as more recent one do not
for the most seem to apply]; additionally, AFAIK kbd still checks for
file-types by extension only, and not by magic-number, which I
consider to be a bug.  I understand you may already have fixed some of
them - please feel free to ask for more details on any particular
item.


o Converted all distributed raw fonts to PSF, with SFM when I was sure
  enough I should be right.
o Fixed `showfont' to restore original UTF/byte mode on exit.
o Fixed validity check on "--charset" option in ksyms.c::set_charset(),
  though still don't know what "unicode" is for here.
o Fixed unimap-misc.c::kernel_get_unimap() to handle the case where the
  unimap is considered invalid by the kernel.
o Made "setfont" to load the default unimap when loading a default font.
o setfont.c::saveoldfont() is now robust, and doesn't produce invalid files
  when all data isn't available.
o Fixed deallocvt to deallocate all possible VTs, instead of exiting as soon
  as one deallocation failed.
o Fixed dumpkeys.c::usage() to display really-available charsets for
  "--charset" option.
o Factorized getunimap into libconsole; added it to the list of obsolete
  	programs.
o Fixed bug in lib/miscutils::open_a_console(), for when it'll be exported by
  	the lib (fd wasn't closed).
o Added message in screendump telling when trying ioctl; previously existing
  	messages alone were too confusing IMHO.
o Made screendump without arguments look at /dev/vcs[a] instead of 
  	/dev/vcs[a]0, which are not created by MAKEDEV.
o Reworked option-handling in showkey (distinguished between commands and
  	options).
o Told showkey that K_UNICODE exists (was "??UNKNOWN??").
o Fixed vcstime so that it handles screens more than 127-chars wide.


Regards,
-- 
Yann Dirson                         |    Why make M$-Bill richer & richer ?
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