Re: vt: Enlarge the framebuffer glyph size from 16 to 32 bits

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2026 at 19:21:30 +0200, Helge Deller wrote:
> On 8/31/26 16:45, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 31, 2026 at 08:20:10 +0200, Thomas Zimmermann wrote:
> >> Am 29.08.26 um 16:39 schrieb Alan Mackenzie:

[ .... ]

> > I've been using the console for around 28 years, now.  I don't recall it
> > crashing at all.  My current font and keyboard files are in exactly the
> > same form as they were 28 years ago.  These formats are stable and
> > dependable.

> >> I've spend the last years working on related code (fbcon) and it
> >> mostly feels dated and unmaintained. Our prime implementation (again
> >> fbcon) has been de-facto unmaintained for years.  We recently had
> >> contributors who are pushing the ioctls semantics and found bugs in
> >> fbcon for a number of corner cases.

[ .... ]

> >> FTR I'm not at all interested in eliminating the kernel's console.

> > Other people, in particular Greg KH, have said this is the current aim.
> > I'm worried for myself.  It is far from clear that there is a suitable
> > replacement for the kernel's console, and its elimination could easily
> > happen without that replacement.  I suppose I could always (laboriously)
> > maintain the console for myself personally.  Or there's always the BSDs.
> > I just don't know what I'd do.

> Alan, I really appreciate your efforts to enhance the kernel console code!
> And I'm not interested to eliminate the kernel console either.

> >> But there are must-have features and nice-to-have features. IMHO for
> >> the kernel console i18n really belongs in the later category.

> > It's 2026, four decades after VGA was the latest thing, and Unicode
> > support is merely a nice-to-have?

> No. IMHO Unicode support would be great.

Thank you, indeed!  That's cheering to hear.

> Thanks!
> Helge

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).