linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] vt: Do not clear UTF when resetting console

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Message-ID: <4611A60F.90505@zytor.com>
Date:	Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:55:43 -0700
From:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
To:	Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@...ux01.gwdg.de>
CC:	"Antonino A. Daplas" <adaplas@...il.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...l.org>,
	Linux Kernel Development <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Paul LeoNerd Evans <leonerd@...nerd.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] vt: Do not clear UTF when resetting console

Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> On Apr 3 2007 08:16, Antonino A. Daplas wrote:
>> That would be the cleanest and purest behavior. But it's possible to set
>> one console to UTF-8 and another to legacy mode.
> 
> The question would be: why would you want to have mixed consoles?
> Switching to UTF8 IMO does not take away any characters, and I mean
> no-framebuffer 80x25 that is limited to 256 glyphs.
> 

512, not 256.  However, the reason would be because you have an 
application (which might actually be running on another system 
entirely!) which expects the other behaviour.

Antonio wrote:
> That would be the cleanest and purest behavior. But it's possible to set
> one console to UTF-8 and another to legacy mode. So one can corrupt the
> user's console just by issuing a reset or echo -e '\033c'. (Although one
> can argue that users who know what UTF-8 is also knows how to set the
> encoding back)
> 
> Until userspace is more capable of setting back the terminal to its
> previous configuration, I would tend to agree with Jan, that we should
> leave the current utf setting of that particular vc alone.

I think you're missing the whole point of console reset.  Its purpose is 
to force the console into a known-good state.  The fewer pieces of state 
it leaves unset, the better.  To some degree it's less important what 
that state actually is.

	-hpa
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