Re: Console mapping problems? [I hear about these - I wanna know!]

david parsons (o.r.c@p.e.l.l.p.o.r.t.l.a.n.d.o.r.u.s)
12 Sep 1997 09:37:03 -0700


In article <linux.kernel.Pine.LNX.3.96.970910152511.1265A-100000@sigil.computersupportcentre.com>,
Teunis Peters <teunis@usa.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 10 Sep 1997, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>
>> > The _FONT_ is loaded into the videocard - when necessary...
>> > ... this could be stored in virtual-mem and reloaded if necessary...
>>
>> There is no kernel facility for accessing virtual memory. Creating
>> such a facility would be very expensive.
>
>Definitely userspace then... (but one adjustment : can access virtual
>memory [jump through hoops]; How about create?)
>
>> > FWIW the font remapping and font itself are quite small: 8bitx16x256 chars
>> > being normal == 4096 bytes per font (1 page). though there ARE 2-page
>> > fonts I would guess.
>>
>> 8bit x 32 x {256,512} = 8192 or 16384 bytes.
>
>Whoops - I was thinking of the TGA code (8bitx16).... Though FWIW VGA
>only seems to use 8bit X 16....

It depends; My distribution and the McAfee WebShield distribution
both ship with the VGA font set to 9x20 (8x20 with a hardware column
pad) on a 80x25 display, and you can, as noted above, push up to a
9x32 font if your display will handle it or you don't care about only
having 13 rows of text on your display.

____
david parsons \bi/ I [heart] VGA soft fonts.
\/