Date: Fri, 29 Dec 1995 10:46:33 +0100 (MET) From: sos@FreeBSD.org To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: hasty@rah.star-gate.com, sos@FreeBSD.org, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, jdli@linux.csie.nctu.edu.tw, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: syscons driver Message-ID: <199512290946.KAA18466@ra.dkuug.dk> In-Reply-To: <7207.820199058@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Dec 28, 95 05:04:18 pm
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In reply to Jordan K. Hubbard who wrote:
>
> Quite the contrary. MANY people still can't get X working on their
> hardware (I even believe Soren is one of them, with the fancy 4MB
> Diamond Viper Pro Video card I gave him! :-( ) and those that do
> often only get there after a titanic struggle.
Oh boy yes, I've had my share of fun :(
(newsflash: it seems Xinside has now provided me with a version that
works, so as I'm typing this I'm in 1280x1024x16Mil colors, not bad :) )
> We also have to keep apples and oranges separate. A cool set of GUI
> apps for X? Sure! A cool X based *installation* for FreeBSD, or
> anything else on the critical path requiring X? Not something we can
> entertain yet.
I think we have to get this sorted out once anf for all.
We cannot assume that Joe Random User has X capable HW, and much less
that he knows what it is he has.
So what we can assume is that he has a graphics capable videocard
(I know the just could be a genuine MGA card out there) of some
sort. What I'm working on will work on CGA (640x200x2), HGA (720x350x2)
EGA (640x350x16), (S)VGA (640x480x16) and will run in a window under X.
That should take care of most of the situations we can encounter out
there.
I'll look closer at the libdialog functions, and maybe, just maybe, I
can come up with a way of using macros or something so the app could
run under libdialog too. I'm not sure its worth the effort on the PC
platform, but as Helmuth mentions we might go for other hardware in
the future (but most will have Graphics HW too, if they are not to
antiquated).
> I also agree that an X installer is a cool project idea to work on.
> I'm about to do my "next wave" of libdialog enhancements that should
> make it more practical for doing such things. It's kind of a pain not
> being able to put two dialogs on the screen up at once!
SO now we have to have a little window system too....(just kidding)
By the way, what happend to MGR(the little windows system that
Bellcore did years ago, I had it runniong under SCO back then)
It would serve as a nice litte graphics environment, and would
run just fine on CGA,HGA,EGA,VGA cards (I still have the code I
wrote for SCO somewhre on tape...)
> We could also do a lot worse to try and sort of copy AccelleratedX's
> installation (Xsetup) - take a look at it and see the difference it
> makes! It's a pity that XFree86 itself isn't quite so modularly
Yes, I have to say that setting up the accelx server is pretty easy
they have done a good job there...
> constructed - I'm sure that's a fairly crucial component to making the
> whole thing "plug and play." Ah well, we can only try to come as
> close as we can!
> Jordan
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Soren Schmidt (sos@FreeBSD.org) FreeBSD Core Team
So much code to hack -- so little time.
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