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Date:      19 Nov 2002 23:05:12 +0100
From:      Alexander Pohoyda <alexander.pohoyda@gmx.net>
To:        Mike Makonnen <mtm@identd.net>
Cc:        freebsd-i18n@freebsd.org, pascal@info.tsu.ru
Subject:   Re: Creating new locales
Message-ID:  <87ptt19pwn.fsf@oak.pohoyda.family>
In-Reply-To: Mike Makonnen's message of "Sat, 16 Nov 2002 20:18:57 -0800"
References:  <20021117041857.GA34284@matrix.identd.net>

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Mike Makonnen <mtm@identd.net> writes:

> The charset encoding is utf8, so I created an LC_TYPE with a UTF2
> encoding. And that's about as far as I have gone.

UTF2 is a typo, isn't it? Did you mean LC_CTYPE ? A file in 
/usr/share/locale/xxx.UTF-8 directory?

To quote Markus Kuhn (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html):
--start
Please do not write UTF-8 in any documentation text in other ways
(such as utf8 or UTF_8), unless of course you refer to a variable name
and not the encoding itself.
--end

> I suppose next thing I have to do is create a keyboard map and a screen map.
> Keymap.5 was helpfull about the first, but I'm not too sure about
> what a screen map is and what I have to do about it.

Let me translate a description made by Ivan Pascal
(http://www.tsu.ru/~pascal/unix/syscons/screen.html#screenmap):
--start
I have mentioned earlier, that during the output of the symbol,
syscons just sends its (symbol's) code to video controller. That's not
completely true.

First, syscons is [re-]mapping the symbol using some internal recoding
table. This "recoding table" (screenmap) is just a 256 byte-long
table, so that any symbol to be outputed may be changed to some other
symbol.
...
--end

This is used, for example, if your video controller cannot load
software fonts (or does not handle them well), but can display
characters you want. In this case you create a screenmap to map bytes
you have to bytes your hardware expects to produce the result you
want.


> What's the
> relationship between a font file, a keyboard map, and a screen
> map (my most important question)?

As far as I understand:
Font file is loaded into your video controller to display bytes as
symbols.
Keyboard map (keymap) is used to convert keystrokes into bytes.
Screenmap may be used to automatically convert bytes to some other bytes.

> The amharic character set contains something between 300-400
> characters, so I was wondering how some other languages with
> more thatn 127 characters manage to work on the console. How do
> you map 2 or more keystrokes to one character? A basic
> outline or pointer would really help.

Maybe Ivan can comment on this. I CC him.


-- 
Alexander Pohoyda
<alexander.pohoyda@gmx.net>

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