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Subject: Re: pcvt/132 columns 
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Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 19:27:19 -0600
From: Chris Csanady <ccsanady@nyx.pr.mcs.net>
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Just a thought, but what about using some sort of generic frame buffer driver 
in the kernel.  I dont think it should be the responsibility of the Xserver or 
anything else to twiddle with the cards settings directly.  The kernel would
just need to know a few card specific things about setting timings, etc.  The
VT system, and X would both be a consumer of this interface.  They would
issue ioctls or such requesting certain resolutions(the default vga, 
resolutions
specified by the user in the kernel config, etc), or possibly to test/set 
timings.  This would also allow the creation of a machine independant console 
driver--something that may not be immediately useful, but would be nice in the 
future.  There would hopefully be no more problems having different X/vt
resolutions.  I've personally always wanted to have them identical, using a
nice tiny font, and not having to wait for the monitor to re-sync, or the card 
to reset its timings upon switches.

I'm not sure, but I think that netbsd has something like this for sun and some
other architectures, and also a generic console that uses it.  I suppose X must
also have some of the necessary code as will if they work together.

For what its worth,
chris