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Date: Fri, 24 Mar 95 11:54:07 JST
From: Masahiro SEKIGUCHI <seki@sysrap.cs.fujitsu.co.jp>
Message-Id: <9503240254.AA15225@seki.sysrap.cs.fujitsu.co.jp>
To: hackers@freefall.cdrom.com
Subject: Re: Japanese syscons font?
References: <199503220419.UAA19060@freefall.cdrom.com>
	<9503221831.AA11164@cs.weber.edu>
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>The first third party LKM was a console driver called "World 21".  It
>was an ISO 2022 driver based on (I think) JIS 212 (might have been the
>older 208).

JIS X 212 is a supplement to X 208.  Sole use of X 212 doesn't make
sense.  "World 21" must support X 208 only or both X 208 and X 212.

Anyway, it sounds like useful for Japanese users.

>XPG/3 is insufficient for use for large glyph set languages (most
>notably the CJK languages -- Chinese, Japanese, Korean).  You would
>have to go to XPG/4.

If you want to write serious text-based application, Yes.  You
absolutely need XPG4 as a minimum functionality.  But, for sysinstall,
(we are discussing on it, right?) most of the "localization" work is
just altering messaes.  XPG3 is fine for the purpose.

>The best thing that came out of that
>was string/argument order mapping for printf to allow sentence
>structure changes when priniting 2 or more strings/values.

I agree.

>I have some internationalization work I have been experimenting with
>off an on, but it involves highly experimental (and now outdated)
>changes to the file system, the console driver, and many pieces of
>the system call interfaces.  It is definitely not ready for prime
>time.

Hmm.  Your work must have addressed a "complete"
internationalizaion...  For sysinstall, I think, we just need:

  (1) ways of altering messages

and

  (2) ways to display non-ASCII characters on the screen.

>It also has the little problem of needing 1280x1024 to get
>an 80x25 standard font cell screen.

It is common among Japanese PC that a Kanji occupies two columns on a
screen.  IBM/Microsoft DOS/V, which is a Japanese version of DOS, runs
with 640x480 standard VGA screen, allowing 40x25 Kanji capacity.

# I agree that the console driver must implement complicated control
# over cell management in this case.  DOS/V console driver (so-called
# JDISP) did it.