Linux console internationalization

[Innocenti Maresin <av95@xxxxxxxx>]

Chris Heath wrote:

> > I use Linux console frequently, usually with KOI8-R charset (USSR
> > cyrillic), but I also think that optional UTF-8 support is good :-)
>
> I totally agree.  It is true that unicode_start/unicode_stop is lame,
> but more importantly, there are some problems in the kernel itself that
> have not been fixed at all in the new kernel 2.6.0-test2.

Yes, I realized it and now I'am thinking about possible kernel modification.
First of all keyboard.c should be modified
to perform in XLATE mode Unicode->8bit translation
using inverse_translate defined in consolemap.c .
KOI8-R, Windows-1251 and even CP866 are in wide use in Russian-speaking Internet
(which use different 8bit mapping for the basically same characters, cyrillic),
so it's unsufficient to restrict to good UTF-8 support only.

I obviously need to coordinate my efforts with you
and official maintainers of the Linux console.

Further, I plan to fix "loadkeys" (to load Unicode instead of 8bit),
and maybe add to console multiple charsets support.
Also, I think that console-keyboard drivers may be divided to 2 versions,
with kernel build option:

the simple, with fixed 8bit codepage, unused legacy things like VT100 graphics removed
(for people who dont'n need i18n or work not so much in console)

and the sophisticated, full-functional and well internationalized.


P.S. I just done a Web-page descibing my view of Linux console i18n
and further plans.
There is also a glossary of used terms.
http://www.comtv.ru/~av95/linux/console/



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Linux-UTF8:   i18n of Linux on all levels
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