[fpc-pascal] Accessing ROM BIOS Font in Linux.

[Marco van de Voort]

> On Thu, 17 Jan 2008, Anthonyh63 at comcast.net wrote:
> > a fallback text output method if font files aren't available. 
> > 
> > The question.   Is this font accessible from linux; do I have
> > to be root ?    How do I make the 16 bit segment/offset address
> > into a 32 bit pointer to access these fonts ?  
> 
> This font is not accessible. Linux does not allow direct hardware 
> access unless you write a device driver.

(Don't know Linux, but under FreeBSD you can get it from the stdout handle
using ioctls. You can do this without root, but you need to be the owner of
tty that is considered local (ttyv)

Fontdemo in the demoes package demonstrates this feature. The ioctls belong
to a FreeBSD subsystem that is called "syscons". It also allows kbd
remapping)