Unfortunately none of your requests can be completed without modifying hildon-desktop. The reason that the font is like that and that it doesn't support unicode is that I am using the text2screen command that writes text directly to the framebuffer. A configuration file is on my mind and I may do it, so that users can choose what to display, and maybe change the color too.

Two things I am missing and any help would be appreciated:
A way to force a redraw of the screen after unlock so fullscreen (uncomposited) apps don't break and a way to detect the phone bug as described a few posts above.

Note to self: study how to receive sighup and shut down

Thanks to everybody for testing.

Btw it's not grey, it's white, just the backlight is too dim for powersaving reasons.