Re: [PATCH v2 0/4] have the vt console preserve unicode characters

[Adam Borowski]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 09:52:13AM -0400, Dave Mielke wrote:
> [quoted lines by Adam Borowski on 2018/06/19 at 15:09 +0200]
> 
> >You're thinking small.  That 256 possible values for Braille are easily
> >encodable within the 512-glyph space (256 char + stolen fg brightness bit,
> >another CGA peculiarity).  
> 
> Not at all. We braille users, especially when working with languages other than
> English, need more than 256 non-braille characters. Even for those who can live
> with just 256 non-braille characters, it's still a major pain having to come up
> with a usable braille-capable font for every needed 256 non-braille characters
> set. I can assure you, as an actual braille user, that the limitation has been
> a very long-standing problem and it's a great relief that it's finally been
> resolved.

Ok, I thought Braille is limited to 2x3 dots, recently extended to 2x4;
thanks for the explanation!

But those of us who are sighted, are greatly annoyed by characters that are
usually taken for granted being randomly missing.  For example, no console
font+mapping shipped with Debian supports âââââ (despite them being a
commonly used part of the BIOS charset), so unless you go out of your way to
beat them back they'll be corrupted (usually into â).  Then Perl6 wants ïïâ,
and so on.  All these problems would instantly disappear the moment console
sheds the limit of 256/512 glyphs.

So I'm pretty happy seeing this patch set.


Meow!
-- 
âââââââ There's an easy way to tell toy operating systems from real ones.
âââââââ Just look at how their shipped fonts display U+1F52B, this makes
âââââââ the intended audience obvious.  It's also interesting to see OSes
âââââââ go back and forth wrt their intended target.