Re: console update

[Niels Möller]

tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:

> As long as the protocol passes characters, things are fine.  Just
> don't start having it pass glyphs instead!  

Why do you think glyphs are wrong, at this level? We're talking about
the interface between the code that keeps track of where on the screen
characters/glyphs are located (the console server), and the code that
draws the current state of the console onto some device. To me, it
makes sense to use glyphs here, if that makes things simpler. One
typical operation is scrolling around the data, and that (in
particular horizontal scrolling) seems more natural to do on a glyph
matrix than on unicode strings.

Say that I want to be able configure the unicode stuff to sometimes
compose characters properly, and sometimes display combining
characters as individual glyphs. Can I do that without help from the
console server? I imagine that the console server wants to handle
things like TABS and linewrapping, so that it needs to know the with
of the glyphs. Is that wrong?

Hmm, now I realize that one assumption I've been making throughout
this discussion is that we're using fixed width fonts. If one wants to
get rid of that, using variable space fonts on the console, then a
glyph matrix isn't so natural anymore.

Regards,
/Niels