Re: Switching to my chosen console font when the framebuffer console starts.

On Sun, 21 Oct 2007, cga2000 wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 21, 2007 at 02:41:38AM EDT, Antonino A. Daplas wrote:
> > On Sat, 2007-10-20 at 22:10 -0400, cga2000 wrote:
> > > I use the "Uni3-Terminus12.psf.gz" font on the console and this gives
> > > me 233x87 character cells on a 15" laptop screen.
> > > 
> > > When the boot process initially switches to the framebuffer console, I
> > > am presented with a somewhat larger font.
> > > 
> > > I later switch to my preferred font by having specified the following in
> > > /etc/console-tools/config:
> > > 
> > >     SCREEN_FONT=Uni3-Terminus12x6
> > > 
> > > I was wondering if there is a way I could switch to this font earlier
> > > in the boot process .. ideally as soon as the framebuffer console
> > > starts.
> > 
> > It's a user font, the earliest you can switch to it is when userspace
> > tools kick in.
> > 
> > Or you can port it as a kernel compiled-in font. See
> > drivers/video/console/font*.c
> 
> That would be cool.
> 
> It looks like I need to:
> 
> 1. convert the .psf font to a text format (fontforge?)
> 2. wrap it up in a .c file -- same as the other font*.c's
> 3. signal this new font to "make menuconfig" so it gets compiled in
> 4. make it the default startup font
> 
> Am I correct?

Yes.

> Item (4) seems to be the tricky part since I have no recollection of
> every being asked what default font I would prefer when I configure a
> kernel.

The kernel has some heuristics to find a good font.
There's also `fbcon=font:...' (cfr. Documentation/fb/fbcon.txt).
And if you build in only one font, it'll be chosen for sure ;-)

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- [email protected]

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
Still grepping through log files to find problems?  Stop.
Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/