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Date:      Sun, 9 Sep 2001 13:16:20 +0100
From:      Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org>
To:        Lal Manavado <manavado@frisurf.no>
Cc:        freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Screen access in freebsd.
Message-ID:  <20010909131620.Z66592@clan.nothing-going-on.org>
In-Reply-To: <000e01c1395f$0b7b7080$617b4382@tocom>; from manavado@frisurf.no on Sun, Sep 09, 2001 at 11:41:25AM -0700
References:  <000e01c1395f$0b7b7080$617b4382@tocom>

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On Sun, Sep 09, 2001 at 11:41:25AM -0700, Lal Manavado wrote:
> Could anyone tell me when accessing to the screen content, does
> FreeBSD have the equivalent of Linux's vcsa devices which allows reading
> back the screen? This used to be unique to Linux I believe.

Not directly.  4-stable (and 4.4-RELEASE, when it comes out), and
-current support a CONS_SCRSHOT ioctl, which can be used to capture the
current contents of the video buffer.  The "-P" and "-p" options to
vidcontrol use this.  Look at the dump_screen() function in
src/usr.sbin/vidcontrol/vidcontrol.c to see the code.

This is how the "screenshots" of Sysinstall in chapter 2 of the FreeBSD
Handbook were generated -- we didn't run Sysinstall in an Xterm and grab
the screen that way, we ran it in text mode, ran "vidcontrol -P ..." to
dump the data, and then I have tools that convert this format to PNG and
plain text (ports/graphics/scr2png, ports/textproc/scr2txt).

> My reason for this query, is that I am not very familiar with the nuts=20
> and bolts of freebsd, and would like to use the os with a Braille display.

OK.  CONS_SCRSHOT currently just dumps the whole screen contents to a
buffer that you provide.  Is that sufficiently fine tuned for you, or do
you need more control over which sections of the screen are grabbed?

-newbies is the wrong mailing list for this discussion.  I've set
Reply-To to point back to me for the time being.  hackers@freebsd.org is
probably a better bet though.

N
--=20
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve             http://www.freebsd.org/
FreeBSD Documentation Project           http://www.freebsd.org/docproj/

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