UNICODE_START(1)

✨ UNICODE_START ✨

okay bestie, welcome to unicode_start(1) from the General Commands Manual section — she's a little utility from the kbd fam and she is SO underrated, no cap 💖

🌸 NAME 🌸

unicode_start — put keyboard and console in unicode mode 👑

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

unicode_start [font [umap]]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

The unicode_start command will put the keyboard and the console into Unicode (UTF-8) mode. it's giving glow-up, honestly ✨

For the keyboard, this means you can attach 16-bit U+xxxx values to keyboard keys using loadkeys(1), and have these show up as UTF-8 input to user programs. also — and this is the fun part — you can type hexadecimal Alt-xxxx using the numeric keypad, and again produce UTF-8. iconic behavior fr fr 💅

For the console, this means the kernel expects UTF-8 output from user programs, and displays the output accordingly. the vibe check is: everything's UTF-8 now 🌈

The parameter font is a font that is loaded. It should have a built-in Unicode map, or, if it hasn't, such a map can be given explicitly as the second parameter umap. When no font was specified, the current font is kept. lowkey respectful of your setup 🫶

💜 NOTE 💜

Unicode mode is a parameter with a value per virtual console. However, usually the font and keymap is common to all consoles. iykyk 😌

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Andries Brouwer <aeb@cwi.nl>

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• dumpkeys(1)
• kbd_mode(1)
• loadkeys(1)
• unicode_stop(1)
• utf-8(7)
• setfont(8)

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 this one shipped with the kbd package, dated 3 Feb 2001 — vintage but still serving ✨ mwah, go forth and be unicode 💖🦋🌸