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Investigate writing core unicode glyphs into console font space #201

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dankamongmen opened this issue Dec 23, 2019 · 9 comments
Closed

Investigate writing core unicode glyphs into console font space #201

dankamongmen opened this issue Dec 23, 2019 · 9 comments
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enhancement New feature or request question/research Further information is requested
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realtext
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1.7.0

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@dankamongmen
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The Linux console appears to allow pretty much arbitrary glyph replacement using the PIO_FONT and PIO_FONTX ioctl(2)s. If so, can we perhaps hijack this space to load those Unicode glyphs we rely on internally? This would include:

  • box drawing characters
  • braille patterns
  • block glyphs

I'm pretty sure we can load these up; the thing that concerns me more is whether we're going to piss off users by doing so. Requires investigation.
@dankamongmen dankamongmen added enhancement New feature or request question/research Further information is requested labels Dec 23, 2019
@dankamongmen dankamongmen added this to Low priority in realtext Feb 21, 2020
@dankamongmen dankamongmen self-assigned this Feb 21, 2020
@dankamongmen dankamongmen mentioned this issue May 11, 2020
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@dankamongmen
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Much to my surprise today, I verified that PIO_FONT and friends (see console_ioctl(4)) is available to unprivileged processes, at least on my Debian workstation. So it seems this is wholly doable, hot shit.

@dankamongmen dankamongmen added this to the 1.5.0 milestone May 19, 2020
@dankamongmen
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I think we ought prioritize this. Right now we look like garbage on the console, arguably worse than straight ncurses apps. Some rounded box drawing, the two half block characters, and the grid characters could really improve things (we'd quickly become the best-looking thing on the console IMHO). Let's aim for 1.5.0.

@dankamongmen
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While we ought provide a notcurses_options flag to disable reprogramming of the console font (should we? I want to be able to depend on some of these glyphs), we can I think dump the actual content of the font at runtime, and thus preserve elements of it. I think that's a solution that would keep most complaints at bay.

@dankamongmen dankamongmen removed this from the 1.5.0 milestone Jun 2, 2020
@dankamongmen dankamongmen added this to the 1.6.0 milestone Jun 15, 2020
@dankamongmen dankamongmen modified the milestones: 1.6.0, 1.7.0 Jun 30, 2020
@dankamongmen
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Initial results using the linuxconjammer PoC are extremely positive!

@dankamongmen
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Ok, using linuxconjammer I can extract the font details, including height and glyph, and also the UTF16->fontindex mapping. I first shim an upper and lower half block into the font glyphs -- we can do this much more intelligently; I'm just shoving them in the back -- and then I search the UTF16 map for the upper and lower half blocks. If I do not find them, I add entries to the rewritten font glyphs. If I find them and they're pointing to different font entries, I rewrite them. This change is persistent across processes within the virtual console (it does not affect other virtual consoles). If I then run notcurses-view or anything else, the half block blitter works as expected (except still with very few colors :().

This is never going to look great due to the restricted number of colors (though once we're reprogramming the palette on the fly, watch out!). But it's a definite improvement. If we shim in the glyphs necessary for the quadblitter, that will help even more (since we use quadblitter in a lot of places). Though perhaps we ought instead look for the necessary quadblitter glyphs, and make the NCBLIT_DEFAULT interpretation dependent on their presence (especially since we'd definitely need to take this into account for NCBLIT_BRAILLE...

anyway, consider this whole idea proven out in concept!

@dankamongmen
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When we do this, make sure we take any UTF16 values previously mapped to the font indexes we blow away, and delete them, since they ought now fall back to the default glyph.

@dankamongmen
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console-after

dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 13, 2020
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add NCOPTION_NO_FONT_CHANGES #201
966eac1
@dankamongmen dankamongmen mentioned this issue Jul 13, 2020
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dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 13, 2020
@dankamongmen
linuxconsole PoC (#791)
dbc83c4 
* use ioctl(KDGETMODE) to detect Linux console
* diagnostic on KDGETMODE
* add logdebug()
* unit test for notcurses_drop_planes(), add ncplane_putnstr_aligned()
* linuxconsole PoC
* linuxconsole: dump unicode->font table
* linuxconsole: explode glyphs
* linuxconsole: show 7 glyphs per 'line'
* linuxconjammer: shim console font with half blocks
* signals: handler for SIGTERM
* man pages: update notcurses_init() for options
* add NCOPTION_NO_FONT_CHANGES #201
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 13, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: shim quadrant block characters #201
6415ddd
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 13, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: shim quadrant block characters #201
4c8569c
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 13, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux: load up unicode + font maps #201
565d935
@dankamongmen dankamongmen mentioned this issue Jul 13, 2020
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dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 13, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: add corner-drawing unimaps to kernel map #201
3f48fb1
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 13, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: add unicode mappings for vert/horiz LDCs #201
a3ce231
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We're now adding unicode mappings for the vast majority of box-drawing characters, and it's working perfectly. Our boxes and lines now look proper in the console. Huzzah!

dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 13, 2020
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linux console: map all line-drawing characters used in demo #201
edd37db
@dankamongmen dankamongmen mentioned this issue Jul 13, 2020
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dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 13, 2020
@dankamongmen
Add kernel unicode-to-font mappings dynamically for line-drawing char…
50ce76b 
…acters (#794)

Part 1 of a two-part revolution in Linux console graphics. Map all the line-drawing Unicode characters to similar glyphs. This means all our nice corners freely translate into rigid corners etc in the console, rather than hateful default characters (usually black diamonds). The demo and all widgets now look correct when drawing lines and boxes. Next, we'll add the actual glyphs for the block-drawing characters, and we'll have the finest graphics ever seen on a text-mode Linux console. #201
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 13, 2020
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linux console: prep table for shims #201
0daf0c4
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 14, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: shim in half blocks #201
6d64f89
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 14, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: shim in single quad block glyphs #201
f15e09c
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 14, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: we've got some hats now, motherfuckers #201
90c1235
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 14, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: full quadblitter power #201
51e113c
@dankamongmen dankamongmen mentioned this issue Jul 14, 2020
Merged
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 14, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: prep table for shims #201
a009eb9
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 14, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: shim in half blocks #201
eaa1c28
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 14, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: shim in single quad block glyphs #201
21d28e7
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 14, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: we've got some hats now, motherfuckers #201
575c366
dankamongmen added a commit that referenced this issue Jul 14, 2020
@dankamongmen
linux console: full quadblitter power #201
b5cfc3e
@dankamongmen
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OK! We've got full Quadblitter2 power in the fuckin' console now! w000000000000000t! Amazing!

realtext automation moved this from Low priority to Closed Jul 14, 2020
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