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@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ + +Quick and dirty uuterm README file: + +First and foremost, uuterm is EXPERIMENTAL software. It may crash or +do bad things. An effort has been made to have it exit gracefully on +fatal errors; however, in some cases the Linux console may be left in +a nonresponsive state (hopefully not possible anymore). Having the +"magic sysrq key" or "SAK" configured in your kernel will be a great +help if this happens! I also recommend running "screen" inside uuterm +so that, if it does crash, you don't lose your work. + +Second, at this time uuterm only supports Linux fbcon as its display +target. Porting to other framebuffer devices should be easy. + +With that said, building is just a matter of running "make". If you +need special CFLAGS options or a nondefault compiler (CC), put them in +a file named config.mak and they will automatically be used. Should be +self-explanatory. + +To run uuterm, set the environment variable UUTERM_FONT to point to a +UCF font file and run "uuterm". A sample UCF font file is available at +http://brightrain.aerifal.cx/~dalias/sample.ucf.gz and has support for +ASCII, Thai, Tibetan, and Japanese text. Tools to make UCF fonts from +other source formats will be available soon. + +By default uuterm runs the default SHELL when started. If you want it +to directly run another program, simply put the name of the program on +the command line, followed by any arguments. + + + + +The idea of uuterm: + +Use of any/all of the world's scripts and languages on *nix should not +be limited to fancy gui applications. Proper rendering of text is +needed all the way down to the console level, and it should not depend +on huge library frameworks or outline fonts. + +In this light, uuterm is an experiment to demonstrate that supporting +"complex" scripts need not be complex; all that's needed is some +natural, logical extensions to ancient bitmap font technology to +account for the fact that glyphs and characters are not the same +thing. + +While display in uuterm is already very "advanced" by terminal +emulator standards, keyboard support is very poor. US keyboard layout +is presently hardcoded in fbcon.c. Eventually I will migrate this to a +more flexible framework. + + + + +Script support: + +- Indic scripts are _almost_ supported by the UCF font system alone, + but need some minor additional support for reordering. This will be + implemented in the near future, if all goes well. + +- RTL/bidi scripts will not render properly. I personally don't believe + there is any sane way to render them properly at the terminal level, + but I will eventually implement algorithms that might work + reasonably for some users. + +- All other (LTR) scripts should be fully supported using the + "advanced" combining and contextual glyph-selection abilities of the + UCF font format (details to come later, along with tools). + |