From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon May 17 16:49:22 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from outmail.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp (outmail.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp [160.12.196.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2317A156DB for ; Mon, 17 May 1999 16:49:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from yokota@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp) Received: from zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp (IDENT:orGbXig5eqKVqOXlxsOhqYliNsydLvDb@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp [160.12.42.1]) by outmail.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp (8.9.3/3.7Wpl2) with ESMTP id IAA16212; Tue, 18 May 1999 08:49:19 +0900 (JST) Received: from zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp (zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp [160.12.42.1]) by zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp (8.7.6+2.6Wbeta7/3.4W/zodiac-May96) with ESMTP id IAA08926; Tue, 18 May 1999 08:53:11 +0900 (JST) Message-Id: <199905172353.IAA08926@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp> To: Kelly Yancey Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, yokota@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp Subject: Re: modex support (again) In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 17 May 1999 15:58:38 -0400." References: Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 08:53:10 +0900 From: Kazutaka YOKOTA Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > I think you just nailed the problem here. It requires a prohibitive >amount of effort to support modex video modes given the return. What I am >thinking about is removing the 320x240 mode (since it is impossibly >difficult to deal with)...no one is using it now so no one would be >affected. I would also like to add a comment into one of the source files >indicating why we have chosen not to support unchained VGA modes (ie. >"modex" modes) so that we can prevent this question from arising again in >the future. > On a slightly related note, I am currently in the process of developing >patches to add more useful "tweaked" modes to the video driver: > graphics 720x480, 16 colors (90x30 8x16 character cells) > graphics 256x256, 256 colors (32x32 8x8 character cells) > graphics 296x220, 256 colors (37x27 8x8 character cells) > text 90x25, 90x30, 90x43, 90x50, 90x60 > > The patches will also update vidcontrol to allow selecting any of the >modes. Please have a look at my latest syscons update patch: http://www.freebsd.org/~yokota/syscons-update.17May.tar.gz It includes 90-column text mode patch you previously submitted (PR: i386/7510)! > I listed the character cell sizes I picked for the graphics >modes...which brings me to an interesting question: how come we pick a >single character cell size for video modes? For video modes 640x480 or >more it would be nice to select what size the character cells are (for >example, selecting an 8x8 cell size rather than 8x16 to double the number >of characters which could be written). Um, I have not advertised this before, but... Syscons in 3.X and 4.0-CURRENT already can do this not only for the VESA 800x600 mode but also for certain other video modes. > I'm not really sure what practical use there is for using graphics modes >to render text (and hence why character cell sizes for graphics modes >would even be used). But currently syscons can do it from VESA 800x600 >(syscons renders the text). Presumably, though, if it is useful, there >isn't anything preventing the implementation from being extended to all >graphics modes (except for modex that is...but I'm now of the impression >that should be axed). Finally, with syscons having the ability to render >text fonts in graphics modes, shouldn't we be able to redefine the notion >of character cell size for graphics modes to be the default character cell >size and allow any available text font be used to render text in graphics >modes? Yes, it can be extended to support all graphics modes (except mode X :-). But, how useful will it be? The VESA 800x600 raster text mode was a kludge for some laptop systems, so it was justifiable. But, how about others? 1024x768 mode can contain only 128 columns if we are to use 8-dot wide font. This is not as good as 132 column text modes provided by VESA. Kazu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message