I'm sorry to do this, because I know it affects users of Ethiopic languages. (The Ethiopic fonts are currently the only 512-character fonts packaged with Linux.)
However:
VGA support for 512-character fonts was always a little half-baked. Using a character outside of the first 256 characters conflicted with the use of the intensity bit.
Utopia and the framebuffer console makes this support unnecessary.
By removing Unicode character mapping from the kernel (which I've already done), there's no way to use a 512-character font.
Going forward, Utopia and the framebuffer console will be necessary for all non-ASCII characters (except the NCURSES ACS characters). This affects European languages too, not just Ethiopian languages.
Also, the way 512-char codepoints are handled in the fbcon code is different from how they're handled in the vga code, and it's making the code overly complex.
I'm sorry to do this, because I know it affects users of Ethiopic languages. (The Ethiopic fonts are currently the only 512-character fonts packaged with Linux.)
However:
VGA support for 512-character fonts was always a little half-baked. Using a character outside of the first 256 characters conflicted with the use of the intensity bit.
Utopia and the framebuffer console makes this support unnecessary.
By removing Unicode character mapping from the kernel (which I've already done), there's no way to use a 512-character font.
Going forward, Utopia and the framebuffer console will be necessary for all non-ASCII characters (except the NCURSES ACS characters). This affects European languages too, not just Ethiopian languages.