Re: Unicode console patch

H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
Mon, 1 Feb 1999 17:04:02 -0800 (PST)

> I remember from the good old times that I had some disagreements
> with Mike Jagdis about this stuff.
>
> The question is whether one wants a console that is completely
> flexible, in principle also able to handle EBCDIC or Code Page 1234,
> or do we want to stipulate in advance that the console must
> implement ISO 2022 ? For Linux, where many people live close
> to a DOS world, the single character set model may make it easier
> to interface with DOS things.
>
> I am not really voicing an opinion now, just saying that when there
> are so many standards to choose between, it is not immediately clear
> that we want to pick ISO 2022, which is semi-superseded by ISO 4873
> and will be made obsolete by ISO 10646.

I would say ISO 4873 restricts how ISO 2022 should be used, but that a
terminal emulator should probably implement full 2022.

Well, we need to support multiple charsets -- at least different
versions of ISO 8859, as well as KOI-8 and the like -- as soon as
possible. 2022 seems to be the standard of choice, and I think the VT
terminal can easily be adapted to be 2022 compliant. Actually, I
rather suspect, based on my reading of the VT 220 technical manual,
that VT 220 *is* ISO 2022 (but not ISO 4873) compliant, and that the
divergences is caused by the way Linux extended the charset system.

-hpa

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