Hi,

  I need to display pseudo-graphic characters on Windows XP (English version) using video unit from fpc-2.4.4 .
  When I use "Raster Fonts" they are displayed correctly

but when I use "Lucida Console" font, small squares are displayed instead.   The current code page displayed by chcp command is 437.

  Is there any workaround for "Lucida Console" font  ?

To demonstrate the problem I wrote a small test program using TextOut procedure from rtl documentation:

program vid_test;
uses video;
procedure TextOut(X, Y: Word ; Const S: String);
var
  W,P,I,M : Word;
begin
  P := ((X - 1) + (Y - 1) * ScreenWidth);
  M := Length(S) ;
  If P + M > ScreenWidth * ScreenHeight then
    M:= ScreenWidth * ScreenHeight - P;
  for I := 1 to M do
   VideoBuf^[P + I - 1] := Ord(S[i]) + ($07 shl 8);
  UpdateScreen(False);
end;
var
  i: Integer;
  S: String;
begin
  InitVideo;
  S := 'Some pseudo-graphic chars: ';
  for i := 10 to 20 do
    S := S + chr(i);
  TextOut(5, 5, S);
  DoneVideo;
  readln;
end.

Many fonts lack graphics for certain code points, particularly code points that are not not normally used for text. Points lacking in a font are substituted by Windows with squares or ?? if you force display of a character the font lacks. "Raster Fonts" is one of the few, as you discovered, that supplies graphs for unusual code points.

But this program, that does not use video unit, correctly displays pseudo-graphic characters even for "Lucida Console" font, so I think my problem has something to do with InitVideo procedure.

program test2;
var
   i: Integer;
   S: String;
begin
   S := 'Some pseudo-graphic chars: ';
   for i := 10 to 20 do
     S := S + chr(i);
   Writeln(S);
   readln;
end.