( C++ programming ) Fedora terminal video text mode

[bretzel]

Hi there,
My first question is about the console ( real text mode video ) environment setup.
I am building a C++ widget API in console mode based on ncurses. It is only for my own joy but you can have a look at my project hosted at sourceforge (http://ncdk.sourceforge.net) . :)

Thus my question is why, in Fedora, the terminal ( in video text mode ) cannot displays
the ascii characters above 'z' I mean the other 128+ ascii values like the famous framed boxes ?

I am absolutely ignorant of terminals setup in linux ... What I would like to read is a guide or where I can find infos on how to customize and add terminal capabilities for my problem. And by the way, even the mouse interface does not work in this mode even if gpm service is working well( I can see the mouse cursor but ncurses seems not capable of catching mouse events).

-- Slackware have kind tools in console mode
-- Mandrake and some others have the console in framebuffer svga. <- I dream to have it in fedora.
---------------------------------------------

Thanx and sorry if I am in the wrong place to ask.
Bretzel

[tashirosgt]

I think the fedora /usr/share/terminfo file sets the terminal's properties. From reading the man on terminfo, I expected to find a very complicated configuration file but on my fc2 installation it looks like a simple set of characters. What does it look like in Slackware?

[bretzel]

Hi,
In Slackare, there is the svgatext mode and a set of character matrixes files and the tool for interactively choose those files. It is very convenient.

Bretzel

[tashirosgt]

And I'm describing /usr/share/terminfo wrong! It's a directory with subdirectories names by characters, not a file. You can find out what terminal your account uses by the commands
echo $TERM
or
env | grep TERM
On my FC1 installation, TERM is xterm.
As an experiment, I think you could set TERM to be one of the other terminals listed in /usr/share/terminfo/x and see if they will display more characters. Where would that be set? I'm not sure, but perhaps in .bash_profile or /etc/termcap.

[crackers]

I did this very thing myself several years ago - I used ncurses and it worked pretty durn well. ncurses alleviates you from having to mess with the terminfo stuff...

[bretzel]

Crakers:
1 - I am actually writing some kind of a c++ ui based on ncurses ( doing my own window/widget's paint buffer management, quickly speaking, I only use ncurses few fetaures: init; stdscr; initcolors; mvaddch; inch; curs_set...:-) That's it, and then Fedora terminal console in text mode is very low - even the gpm isn't catched by ncurses - I mean no mouse in my app using ncurses getch() - KEY_MOUSE.

2- I was wondering how I could make console keep the framebuffer graphical boot mode which is very cute and could let the terminal console with very rich-features. Because at the present state, the text mode console is too low on setup. Even the framebox character could not be displayed in this mode...Man We are in end of the year 2004 with SVGA framebuffer - or at least SVGA text mode capable of 132x64 character screen cells...
I have not lots of free time to deeply study to become a kernel/termcap guru... I just need to have at least some pointers to guidelines on how I could configure linux console with more rich features than the very flat poor Fedora setup....

[crackers]

I have not lots of free time to deeply study to become a kernel/termcap guru... I just need to have at least some pointers to guidelines on how I could configure linux console with more rich features than the very flat poor Fedora setup....
Guess what? You may have to deeply study it. If you want/need some pointers, get the code for the "dialog" program (not sure where it comes from), since it does a lot of the same things you seem to be wanting to do.

As for the extended "graphical" elements, the terminal needs to support the ANSI character set - FC is based on unicode and the two are not necessarily equal.