On Fri, 9 May 1997, der Mouse wrote:

> >> It sounds as though your idea of "practical" is "like MS-DOS".  [...]
> > No no, not at all, far from it.  [...]  I just would like to see it
> > easier to practical things like replacing the character set with
> > anything [...].
> 
> Given the hardware it has to contend with, I don't think this is
> practical; I think it's restricted to the 256 characters in the
> canonical character-generator ROM.  I'm sure someone from port-i386
> will be glad to correct me if I'm wrong.

Actually, the EGA card has slots for 4 downloadable fonts, and the VGA has
slots for 8.  PCVT can make use of this.  Infact there are many utilities
that come with PCVT.  There are two font editors, and a utility for
loading the different fonts.  The problem is, PCVT does some sort of
built-in remapping that I don't understand.  I've looked at the default
font in the font editor, and it has several characters in it that I havn't
been able to get it to display (because of the remapping). 

> > Or, of course, you can drop the card into graphics mode and draw
> whatever you please.  I'm not sure _that_ would be something I'd advise
> putting into the kernel, though - if you want X, you know where to find
> it. :-)

Yeah, doesn't sound like a good idea to me either.  Might as well let the
card do all the hard work unless you really need the graphics (i.e. X).

> > Anyway, if I'm way off here - if PCVT hadles things like character
> > sets they "right" way - then tell me and I'll shut up.
> 
> I don't know what the heck pcvt does with character sets; my one
> attempt to run the i386 port to date has been pretty disastrous (but is
> why I'm on the port-i386 list at all - I'd unsubscribe, except that the
> traffic is low enough I don't bother).  Your description sounded a lot
> like X3.41/X3.64, which I do feel I know relatively well, that's why I
> chipped in.

I guess the problem is that I know the PC hardware aspect of it, but not
the other stuff.  I know the card is capable of much more - and PCVT hints
at that by giving you a taste of what you can do, but it just isn't as
flexible as it could be.  I'm just not sure how that "flexibility" would
interact with it's excellent "compatability" - which I know nothing
about...

Oh Well, I might hack around with it at some point.
Thanks,
	Rick

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Rick Byers                                      Internet Access Worldwide
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