omission in video driver

: Heh, you mean "here is the hardware information, please make a patch". : But your choice of red makes it truly a "bleeding edge" kernel :)

: The fact that we have been using linux for ~ 10 yrs and nobody has : complained about the lack of this function yet says something...

: Anyway, have a look at this and see if it is what you had in mind. : I figured it would be sensible to have a per VC colour

Yes, bleeding edge it was.

Adding something like this is allowed only on April 1st.

[But other systems have it. I find that both FreeBSD and UnixWare have a KDSBORDER ioctl.]

Yes, your patch sounds more or less OK, but more less than more, since I think that this should be treated completely parallel to the palette stuff. And that works as follows:
There are ioctls and escape sequences. Escape sequences set the palette per-VC. Upon reset the palette is reset to a default. The default is set by ioctl. (And at the moment the ioctl sets the default, it is also applied to the actual screen.)

[Not that I like this construction so much, but for uniformity..] [In fact the author of the palette patch did not know the standard for escape sequences, but nobody stopped him.]

Andries