Subject: Few thoughts oon framebuffer use, input wanted
To: None <port-vax@NetBSD.org>
From: Blaz Antonic <blaz.antonic@siol.net>
List: port-vax
Date: 02/12/2004 11:14:20
Hello,

I found myself at a crossroad, so to speak; i'd like to finisg LCG code
so it can be comitted to the main tree but there are few key issues that
need to be sorted about before that.

1: Thanks to der Mouse who found the lcoation of built-in font bitmaps
for VS 4k model 60 (at the very least) we could now use built-in fonts
as opposed to tiny 8x15 qvss font. Built-in fonts are 16x24 pixels in
size which would result in 80x42 character cells on HR version of LCG
(which only two model 60's i know of so far use). However the font maps
apparently lack certain characters as 10 (maybe more) slots are filled
with a bitmap of vertically mirrored question mark ('?' flipped over its
vertical axis). The question is, should we go for built-in system fonts
?

2: I'd _love_ to support different console sizes automatically; thanks
to Gabucino's testing we now know how to handle VLC's LCG and with his
help i should have ID differences (in certain registers) so i will be
able to tell LR LCG apart from HR LCG without relying on CPU detection
(VLC's seem to use LR LCG but docs suggest that HR version was avaliable
for them too). Is automatic support of various LCG types preferred over
user-settable support (at config/compile time) ? I'm leaning towards the
former, config and forget, so that regular users won't be bothered by
having to select correct mode and all  :-)

3: Default color palette of LCG sucks. We have to replace it with
something more useful, something at least quasi-standard. I was thinking
about default VGA palette; it has 16 basic colors (8 in both normal and
light version), 16 shades of grey, 216 colors and 8 empty slots
("black"). My idea was to set palette to this extracted VGA palette
(with minor bit-shifting to compensate for 18 versus 24 bit color space
of VGA versus what BT458 in LCG supports), any objections ?

4: I'd be glad to provide support for further palette and font/screen
size changes (via ioctl) but i have no idea where to look for code that
does something similar so i'd know how to implement such ioctls. If
anybody has any pointers feel free to let me know, it's not like i'm
doing this for money you know ... it's for your own good too.

BTW der Mouse, your mail box seems to have become picky about whose mail
it accepts once again so my last mail to you bounced (or my dynamic DNS
resolution stopped working for some reason ? gotta check :-)

Blaz Antonic
-- 
Hi! I'm a signature virus!
Copy me into your signature to help me spread!