On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 09:41:32PM +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, Nick.
>
> On Mon, May 09, 2011 at 02:16:23PM -0700, Nick wrote:
> > The font you are using likely doesn't support the line glyphs. I've
> > found Envy Code R to be a good all-purpose font that supports a good
> > number of glyphs.
>
> Surely it would have to be included as part of mutt. I think the font's
> author doesn't permit this.
>
> Would the font be available in an 8x16 version, suitable for a Linux
> framebuffer?
>
> Are these line drawing glyphs in Unicode, anywhere? I don't think they
> are. I don't think there's even a range of codes reserved "for
> application use", which is a shame - there're 2^31 codes to go round,
> after all.
>
It took me a while to reply to this because I don't normally show
threads (on many lists, subjects develop and change, I find it
easier to just skim through everything!), but I've now confirmed
that on this machine the thread display is similar in rxvt-unicode
and in a framebuffer console. So, yes, the drawing glyphs (and just
about everything else, including "reserved" ranges, which in
practice could show as anything) *are* in unicode.
Whether a font thinks they are worth mapping is a different matter:
you've only got a total of 256 or 512 glyphs on the console, not
everything can appear at the same time (but multiple codes can be
mapped to the same glyph, e.g. a right single angle quote might be
mapped to greater-than ('>'). Finding a font which *looks
good* (everyone's ideas of how things should appear is different)
and *covers all, or most, of what you want to be able to read* takes
a lot of testing.
If you can't find anything else, I recommend my own 8x16 font:
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/~ken/fonts/sigma-consolefonts/ [ 0.8
is current ]. Unusually, this is a "build from source" font (needs
perl, etc) and you can modify it as you wish. For most people, I
recommend the LatGrkCyr variant (which should also be available
pre-built in the next version of 'kbd'). The tarball also has some
example data to help identify which unicode glyphs *any* font covers
(ignoring non-alphabetic languages, of course).
I'm glad to find someone still using the linux console, but in
transitioning to UTF-8 you really do need to revisit the font choice
you made when you first set your console up.
ĸen [ sorry, 'ken' ]
Surprised to find that even I have a use for some of the line-drawing
glyphs :)
--
das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce
