[syslinux] Display borked when loading FONT

[Gene Cumm]

On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 4:49 PM, Ady <ady-sf at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 25/05/2013 18:37, Ady wrote:
>>
>> > According to previous posts (by HPA) in this Syslinux mailing list,
>> > Syslinux configuration files (and so-called DISPLAY or "message"
>> > files too) are parsed using codepage "865" (which is not exactly 100%
>> > the same as CP850). CP865 is almost the same as CP437, with the
>> > exception of 3 characters.
>>
>> This is an important information I missed. I was wrongly assuming that the BIOS' default font was used.
>>
>> Now I am going to reconsider including a FONT directive in isolinux.cfg and a CP437 font in /isolinux, as I did.
>>
>> (For the records, I won't really miss "¢", '¥' or '»' in isolinux :-)
>>
>> I will just edit isolinux.cfg message.txt and f*.txt in UTF-8 mode
>> and use "iconv" to convert it to CP865.
>>
>
> Hello Didier,
>
> Since you are working on internationalization, I would suggest _not_
> dropping the FONT directive for your case. Languages as Cyrillic,
> Greek or Portuguese (among others) are not 100% supported in CP865
> nor in CP437; and that's before even thinking about the built-in BIOS
> language. Additionally, some "accented" uppercase characters are also
> not supported in CP437.
>
> I could think of an experiment so to be able to select the adequate
> codepage for each language, but I think it would be better if someone
> else could post the adequate procedure.
>
> Best Regards,
> Ady

No, I'm pretty sure DISPLAY files, SAY statements and all other
text-mode console output are using the native font, not CP865/CP437.
VESA output might differ but one would need to test.

CP865 is only used for the translation of the UTF filenames in
Microsoft file systems (UTF-16LE UTF16LE UTF16; LFN Long File Names in
VFAT extensions of FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 and probably NTFS based on
UTF-related commits).

--
-Gene