--- Begin Message ---
- To: submit@bugs.debian.org
- Subject: fonter: Fonter reads messed fonts after svgatextmode set S3_HSText feature
- From: Enrico Zini <zinie@cs.unibo.it>
- Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 23:44:03 +0200
- Message-id: <E11b9iF-0008Gx-00@marvin.casa>
Package: fonter
Version: 1.7-5
Severity: normal
Hello!
Sure this is a bug to be forwarded upstream; anyway, here's how it works (not):
On S3 based video cards, you can acheive nicer (= higher pixel clock) text
modes enabling S3_HSText in SVGATextMode; it's well documented in TextConfig(5)
man page (the man page of SVGATextMode's configuration file, search for
S3_HSText), that this option requires that (from the same manpage):
"the font must be stored
in memory in a different format than would normally be
used (i.e. the normal font loading programs won't be able
to do this). The S3 designers provided a special register
for that purpose. This register, when set, will automati
cally change the memory access so that the font can be
loaded in a normal fashion. This allows normal font load
ers to do the job.
Due to that special register, font loading will only work
when it is executed from within SVGATextMode. This way,
SVGATextMode can set this special register before running
the font loader, and reset it again afterwards."
Shortly, you need to set a register on the video card, mess with fonts and
restore that register.
That said, every program working with text fonts is likely to fail: setfont is
another who fails, but SVGATextMode has a functionality for calling it in the
right moment.
It seems the fonter author has to contact SVGATextMode author for instructions
on how to cope with this, and perhaps SVGATextMode could provide an external
utility to enable other text font utilities to work with this type of cards.
Thanks for the attention, Enrico
-- System Information
Debian Release: potato
Kernel Version: Linux marvin 2.2.10 #2 Mon Jun 14 19:04:44 CEST 1999 i586 unknown
Versions of the packages fonter depends on:
ii libc6 2.1.2-5 GNU C Library: Shared libraries and timezone
ii libncurses4 4.2-3.3 Shared libraries for terminal handling
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