Re: console update

[Adam Olsen]

On Wed, Jun 19, 2002 at 01:17:18AM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2002 at 09:12:32AM +0200, Niels M?ller wrote:
> > 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?
> 
> No, it is correct.  The console server definitely needs to know the width of
> the glyph.  I am not sure what double-width characters in Unicode require in
> the server and clients, I guess it won't be too hard to implement that.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> This is an assumption you really have to make.  curses and other libs/apps
> can not do the right thing with variable space fonts.

Could you explain the difference between double-width characters and
variable-width fonts, with regards to how curses and such handle them?
It seems to me that in both cases the answer is to simply avoid them.
And if you can optionally put tabs on the screen, you could optionally
use a variable-width font, you just have to make sure to avoid it when
it causes problems.

> 
> Is there a terminal emulator for X that uses variables space fonts?  I would
> like to try it out.  But I can imagine a hell lot of display problems caused
> by app-unawareness, starting from ASCII art to graphic characters (box
> drawing) and overwriting text.  Eg,

I just checked, and you can tell gnome-terminal to use a
variable-width font, but it seems to really screw things up.  It
doesn't seem to be erasing old characters properly.

But, I see no reason to *require* a fixed width font.  So what if it
screws up some ascii art, many apps would work fine.  Just as long as
you can disable it when you need to.


-- 
Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus