Re: ISO-8859-1 completeness of kernel fonts?

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@transmeta.com>]

Mack Stevenson wrote:
> 
> Anyway, I have already pinned down the source file (in 2.2.18) -
> drivers/video/font_sun12x22.c - and would like to try to change this. Yet it
> seems like the kernel boots using the CP437 charmap, so this would need to
> be modified, too -  I suppose that the relevant file is
> drivers/char/consolemap.c.
> 
> - How can I instruct the kernel to use the ISO-8859-1 character map?
> drivers/char/consolemap.c contains three different translation tables -
> CP437, ISO-8859-1 and VT100 mapped to Unicode -; how can I choose one of
> them?
> 
> - Or shouldn't I even bother about this since in the ASCII range CP437 and
> ISO-8859-1 map to the same characters? May I just boot the kernel using an
> unmatched pair of (CP437) charmap and (ISO-8859-1) font, feeling at ease
> because the kernel won't try to print any non-ASCII characters, and only
> later, in userspace, call loadunimap?
> 
> Am I understanding this correctly?
> 

Not really.

You're much better off designing a larger ISO-8859-1 font and load in in
user space.  You can use the 12x22 font in the kernel as a base.

	-hpa

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