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Hello,

> > > It makes a LOT of sense. The problem is that if we used the big
font
> > > on a small screen, we ended up with a 57 column screen. sysinst
would
> > > then do something in the install that would panic() the system.
That
> > > was no fun...
> >=20
> > Eh, that sounds ... weird. Definitely not a good reason to panic.
>=20
> I agree.
>=20
> It may have been that sysinst itself just fell over (no panic) but it
> had the same net effect on my ability to install and run NetBSD. That
> machine never had it on it.

Hmm, I installed NetBSD on a SPARCbook with a kernel using the Big Font
( the display is only 800x600 ) - annoying to use but no panic.

> > What I meant is - it should be configurable which font we use.
> > And - wouldn't it make more sense to fall back to a smaller font (
> > ROM font or not ) only when we can't get at least 80 columns with
> > whatever font the user wants? The current code would use the ROM
> > font in 640x480,even if the compiled-in font is small enough ( like
> > 8x8 or so )
>=20
> I think the original idea was that we had one font in the kernel and
> we just used the console one so we didn't have to have a second and
> also as we "knew" that it was too big. :-)

Yeah, thought so. Having the ROM font as a fallback reserve is
definitely a Good Thing(tm) - I wonder if we can do the same on SPARC
hardware. Low resolution displays aren't /that/ common there but my
SPARCbook is such an example.

> You how ever are putting more thought into this. :-) Before this was=20
> always worked on just enough to get it out of the way. You're thinking
> about fixing it. :-)

Heh, I definitely fixed it for my boxes by tearing ofb apart and
changing the display driver attachment code to be compatible with
sparc(64) drivers, I was even pestering you with this a while ago ;)
Didn't have much time to play with it though.=20
There should be an option to explicitly request the ROM font and another
one to specify a small font to use when the preferred font is too big.
If that's still too big we can always fall back to the ROM font. Maybe
we should just register the ROM font with rasops so rasops_init can
choose it on its own.

have fun
Michael

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