Re: console font limits

[Ken Moffat <zarniwhoop@ntlworld.com>]

On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 12:09:46AM -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
> 
> BTW, the PSF font format documentation seems to suggest that
> there is a way to make the kernel handle combining accents:
> http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/kbd/font-formats-1.html
> Does anybody know if that really works? I could sure use that.

 My reading of it suggests you need a precomposed version to which
the combining combination can be mapped (the 00c5 for Å in the
example).  Possibly, the fffe and ffff are used as delimiters for
the combination).  Maybe, it could be used for yoruba (yeah, I was
looking at that an hour before I read your mails) _if_ the font
has room to fit in a "private use" character which can hold the
precomposed value.

 For any letter where a precomposed version is in the unicode
standards, the only use for combining characters in a console font
seems to be as a way of displaying text where somebody has already
used them.

 For latin languages which need additional composed letters, the
bigger problem will probably be the input - I've no idea if the
console keymap can use combining keys (direct input of the unicode
hex is available, of course), and I can't manage to get the direct
input of the codes for combining diacriticals to work in combination
in my preferred graphical terminal.

Ken
-- 
das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce