Text-mode issues

[Harold L Hunt II]

Benny,

Benjamin Riefenstahl wrote:
> And as somebody else today already expressed it similarily, I strongly
> prefer a stable and free-as-in-speech solution to a fast and
> proprietory one.
> 

Of course, we all like that :)

> 
> There is one issue for me and that is the seeming "disbelief" of XFree
> in text mode.  I see three obvious items on that list currently:
> 
> 1) The fonts directory must be on a binary mount.  This is documented
>    and in the FAQs.  Given that the fonts directory is there only for
>    XFree, this bug is minor.
> 

The post-install scripts for the font packages were modified some time 
ago to automatically mount the fonts directory in bin mode.  There are a 
few issues where uninstalling then reinstalling to a new directory will 
put the fonts in the wrong place, but this should not affect most users.

Did you have a specific problem where the fonts directory was not 
automatically mounted in bin mode, or are you just citing this as a weak 
area?

> 2) The /tmp directory must be on a binary mount, otherwise
>    international keyboards don't work.  I fought with that some time
>    because I had forgotten about this, but than I found it again in
>    the archives.  As the /tmp directory is a common resource, I don't
>    like that at all.  Related to this bug is that the error doesn't
>    seem to show in the log, at least I couldn't find any hint, the
>    keyboard just isn't set correctly.
> 

I was not aware of this.

Have you tried not using -kb, or whatever else, and just trying 
Alexander's auto-detection code?  Or, does Alexander's auto-detection 
code still depend on /tmp?

> 3) The binary files in CVS are not marked as such (cvs admin -kb).
>    This is not only in the hw/xwin directory, but in the whole XFree
>    CVS.  In theory this is not only an issue on Windows but on Unix
>    also.  In practice, a regular CVS checkout is just broken on
>    Windows, unless you only use Cygwin's CVS tools with binary mounts.
> 

Oh... I will be the first to admit that I don't know much about CVS.  As 
for the files outside of xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xwin, this would have to 
be taken up with devel@xfree86.org.  I am not sure if they have 
discussed this in the pass, though I guess that they have.

> I'd like to help fixing those issues.  I have downloaded the CVS
> (although I will have to do it again with a binary mount) and after
> that I am going to start compiling, than doing the necessary code
> review and debugging.  If any of you have any input, I'd like to hear
> about it.
> 

We appreciate any help we can get.

> The first thing for development is item 3), the CVS setup.  Has this
> ever been discussed?  Or is it just that nobody is aware of the
> problem yet?  I guess I'll need to post to devel@Xfree86.org about it,
> I just subscribed to that list.
> 

Hey... you are stealing my advice from above!  Who told you I was going 
to write that?!?  ;)

Harold