[syslinux] Display borked when loading FONT

[Gene Cumm]

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 9:06 AM, Gene Cumm <gene.cumm at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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

Confirmed in a VMware VM that OEM codepage 437 (OEM-437 OEM437 CP-437
CP437; its native OEM codepage) was utilized for text mode and VESA
mode display.

--
-Gene