Re: [LINUX5250] HOWTO and font selection

[Frank Richter <frichter@xxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2003 at 09:41:50PM -0500, phil wrote:
> James Rich wrote:
> 
> >Phillip.Watts@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>HOWTO is nice, thank you.
> >>
> >>The howto shows how to do font_80 and font_132
> >>selection but implies its only for xterm sessions.
> >>
> >>Can you select fonts for console sessions?  I haven't
> >>had any luck doing so.
> >>
> >>Linux:
> >>In VGA normal mode displaying a print spool file will not let me
> >>switch to a smaller font.
> >>In VESA mode the default 80 char font is too small.
> >
> >
> >AFAIK the font is completely determined at boot time.  lilo can be 
> >configured use a given font, but once the machine has booted you are 
> >stuck with that.

That is IMHO not true. One can switch fonts using linux console
utils "consolechars". You can also use svgatextmode, which uses extended
VGA text-modes of most SVGA-Cards. Another way is, perhaps, using fbset
to switch framebuffer bodes. This does not work with the vesa
framebuffer, but with most (all?) extended framebuffer drivers (like
rivafb). But, all this is really bound to the linux console and will not
work with other Unices.

> That means I cannot use the console version because switching to a 132 
> display
> for print spool files is a req.
> The reason I am interested in a console app is I have a big need for 122 
> key kbd
> and I can map anything with Linux setkeycodes.  But XFree86's convoluted
> keyboard handling ( I've been hacking on the source for 3 weeks) doesn't
> assign keycodes to all the 122 scancodes - a real mess.
> 
> SOooo,,,,
> Since I can dynamically change fonts with
> consolechars(8)  I wonder......
> 
> I would love to try to hack the 5250 source and change fonts dynamically.
> You do it under xterm.
> Could you give a hint where in the source it sees from the AS400 a 132 
> display
> thingy and where would be a good place to make the font jump and I'll see
> if can make the patch.

The xterm font switch is in cursesterm.c, functions
tn5250_curses_terminal_set_xterm_font() and curses_terminal_update().
Font switching in xterm is easy, we just put an escape sequence to stdout.

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