[ipxe-devel] UTF-8 font available? [was Re: better symbol for "->" in Menu?]

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Hi Oliver,

On 18.09.2013 09:21, Oliver Rath wrote:
> Hi Klaus!
>
> The PCs I use are uefi-capable, but this is disabled at the moment. They
> have also a graphical bios with mouse (!) functionality. Im not sure of
> the sense of a mouse capable bios, but there seems to be a market for this.
>
> Unfortunatly your answer does not have a hint for me where to look for
> using i.e. semi-graphic symbols or true graphics with ipxe. Am I able to
> use an UTF-8 font?

UTF-8? Dream on :D

The PC in the BIOS has an 8 bit character table (and let's ignore 
loadable fonts and the possibility to use another bit from the attribute 
byte to get a 9 bit charset), the famous code page 437.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437

Klaus

>
> Tfh!
> Oliver
>
>
>
> Am 17.09.2013 17:42, schrieb Klaus Espenlaub:
>> Hi Oliver,
>>
>> On 17.09.2013 17:25, Oliver Rath wrote:
>>> Hi list,
>>>
>>> it is possible to use a kind of "native" arrow-symbol for "->"? Which
>>> font is used here? Does it have semigraphic symbols inside?
>>
>> I'm not telling you what serial terminal I use with iPXE... just using
>> this as an illustration that such a seemingly simple question has a very
>> complicated answer.
>>
>> If you only care about the PC-defined text mode the answer is relatively
>> simple, because the PC charset is rather well known.
>>
>> However iPXE has so many options (does EFI provide the PC charset even
>> if a system starts in graphical mode?) that the impact is not so easy to
>> predict. Sticking to ASCII is guaranteed to work.
>>
>> Klaus
>>
>>
>>> Tfh!
>>>
>>> Oliver