[tlug] Minority fonts

[Frank Bennett <bennett@example.com>]

Dear all,

I'm working on internationalizing the interface to the "backup thingme". I
have a tagging system and gettext back end in place for the shell scripts,
so translations will be maintainable. I've managed to get English, Thai and
Vietnamese demo text up on the console so far (as well as Japanese, of
course).  But aesthetically, Thai and the other Indic scripts (Khmer, Burmese)
really need wide-character framebuffer treatment (like Japanese receives in
jfbterm).  I want to set up a smooth transition path for getting fonts from
TTF onto the console.

I think I've found the utilities I need to do this: bterm, ttf2bdf, and
pdmenu.  But I could use advice when it comes to matching encodings to
characters and such; I don't understand yet how the various layers of font
abstraction fit together.  I would GREATLY appreciate advice, and if anyone
would be willing to receive correspondence when it all starts not working the
way I imagined it would, could I ask you to get in touch by private post?

It's an opt-in thing; I don't plan to paper the list with queries on this.

Cheers,
Frank Bennett