Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] [PATCH] FBDev: vga16fb port

[Antonino Daplas]

On Tue, 2002-12-03 at 20:47, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-12-03 at 12:22, Antonino Daplas wrote:
> > >   Things I like to get done for the vga16fb driver. 
> > > 
> > >   1) Its own read and write functions to fake a linear framebuffer.
> > Should be doable with fb_write and fb_read, but with mmap, the app still
> > needs to know the VGA format.
> 
> I question whether thats something that belongs anywhere near the
> kernel. Ben Pfaff wrote a fine library for vga16 hackery (BOGL) and it
> combines very nicely with the fb driver.
I kinda agree with this.  Most fb apps use mmap to access the
framebuffer, so it's almost impossible to fake a linear framebuffer from
a planar one.  

> 
> > >   2) The ability to go back to vga text mode on close of /dev/fb. 
> > >      Yes fbdev/fbcon supports that now. 
> > 
> > I'll take a stab at writing VGA save/restore routines which hopefully is
> > generic enough to be used by various hardware.  No promises though, VGA
> > programming gives me a headache :(
> 
> You can pull the code out of the old svgalib library. Since its not
> doing any card specific stuff the generic vga->text restore ought to do
> the right thing.
> 
Thanks for the info.  I think I'll review this one to see what I missed.

Tony