Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 08:53:10 +0900 From: Kazutaka YOKOTA <yokota@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp> To: Kelly Yancey <kbyanc@alcnet.com> Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, yokota@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp Subject: Re: modex support (again) Message-ID: <199905172353.IAA08926@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 17 May 1999 15:58:38 -0400." <Pine.BSF.4.05.9905171511140.24408-100000@kronos.alcnet.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9905171511140.24408-100000@kronos.alcnet.com>
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> 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
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