Re: Questions around adding a monochrome graphics/ascii display driver over gpio framework

[Jachym Holecek <freza%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

Hello,

# Bill Blass 2008-09-30:
> My goal was to abstract the bus specifics away from the EPSON display
> driver to keep it portable.  Specifically, I added the following EPSON
> display driver sources:
> 
> - /usr/src/sys/dev/ic/s1d13700_subr.c
> - /usr/src/sys/dev/ic/s1d13700reg.h
> - /usr/src/sys/dev/ic/s1d13700var.h
> 
> ...and the following gpio source file:
> 
> - /usr/src/sys/dev/gpio/gpiocfag.c
> 
> I added the following content to /usr/src/sys/dev/gpio/files.gpio:
> 
> device  gpiocfag: s1d13700, wsemuldisplaydev
> attach  gpiocfag at gpio
> file    dev/gpio/gpiocfag.c                     gpiocfag

Looks good if 's1d12700_subc.c' is a trivial piece of code. If it's not,
it would be better to make it a driver on its own and have 'gpiocfag'
as its attachment. Something along the lines of:

  sys/conf/files:
    device foo
    file dev/ic/foo.c foo

  sys/dev/gpio/files.gpio:
    attach foo at gpio with foo_gpio
    file dev/gpio/foo_gpio.c foo_gpio

The idea is that the 'ic' part has all the chip logic and the '<bus>'
part has just enough code to glue the 'real' driver to the underlying
bus.

> 2) I do not intend to operate the display as a terminal.  I intend to
> operate the display as a status display which will contain a mix of ascii
> and bitmap images.

Sounds neat! :-)

> Ideally, I'd like to see a usermode appliation/service drive the display,
> but I am unsure how the usermode code will interfae with the driver.  
> 
> - Should I implement a character or block device or both (one for ascii
> and one for graphics)?

Character device would be fine.

It would be nice to handle the ascii part as a wscons tty and use extra
set of iocttls for the bitmap part, but I don't know if that's reasonably
possible.

> - Should the open/read/write ioctl's be handled in the /usr/src/sys/dev/ic/
> or the /usr/src/sys/gpio code?  

In the bus-independent part.

HTH,
        -- Jachym