From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 28 06:47:57 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8003516A4CE for ; Tue, 28 Oct 2003 06:47:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from epita.fr (hermes.epita.fr [163.5.255.10]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E49143F75 for ; Tue, 28 Oct 2003 06:47:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from millet_f@epita.fr) Received: from jenna (jenna.epita.fr [10.42.14.6]) by epita.fr id h9SElqS15795 for EPITA Paris France Tue, 28 Oct 2003 15:47:52 +0100 (CET) Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 15:47:51 +0100 (CET) From: florian millet X-X-Sender: millet_f@jenna To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: brltty port to freebsd X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 14:47:57 -0000 Hi, We are 3 developers on a project that consists to port the program brltty (braille tty) to freebsd. brltty currently works under linux (and under freebsd too but with a method that is not really clean). Under linux it reads the devices /dev/vcs and /dev/vcsa that give the content of the current screen and sends it to the serial port (or the usb port) where a braille terminal is plugged. What we want to do is to code the devices /dev/vcs and /dev/vcsa under freebsd that could allow brltty to function like under linux. We have currently succeeded in compiling brltty under freebsd 4.7 and 5.1 with the "linux method" but we cannot run it because we have not yet coded the /dev/vcs and /dev/vcsa device drivers. We have some questions regarding all those problems : - 1 : brltty reads /dev/vcs or /dev/vcsa but does ioctls on /dev/tty0 that also does not exist (at least with this name) under freebsd, is there an equivalent device that could allow us to make ioctls on it to know when something happens on the current screen ? - 2 : the device drivers for vcs and vcsa use a function of the console device driver that itself calls a function of the hardware screen driver that gives access to the video memory. We are looking for an equivalent function in the kernel of freebsd to access the video memory. - 3 : currently we have written a dummy-driver for vcsa that creates a /dev/vcsa device using the function (or system call I don't know) make_dev and loads properly under 4.7 and 5.1 but doesn't under 5.1-CURRENT (as of 2003-10-26). The problem seems to come from the make_dev function that outputs "no such file or directory". Any idea why does this happen? Thank you in advance for your answers. Gregis Pascal & Ketterer Thibault & Millet Florian P.S.: our mail addresses are : kit@epita.fr florian.millet@laposte.net gregis_p@epita.fr