Man page 1 : unicode_start

unicode_start - put keyboard and console in unicode mode

unicode_start [ font " [" umap ]]

The

unicode_start command will put the keyboard and console into Unicode (UTF-8) mode.

For the keyboard this means that one can attach 16-bit U+xxxx values to keyboard keys using

R loadkeys (1), and have these appear as UTF-8 input to user programs. Also, that one can type hexadecimal Alt-xxxx using the numeric keypad, and again produce UTF-8.

For the console this means that the kernel expects UTF-8 output from user programs, and displays the output accordingly.

The parameter fontis 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 second parameter. When no font was specified, the current font is kept.

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

R dumpkeys (1),

R kbd_mode (1),

R loadkeys (1),

R unicode_stop (1),

R utf-8(7),

R setfont (8)