Re: colortext translator
Hi Kalle,
On Thu, Sep 30, 1999 at 01:32:44AM +0300, Kalle Olavi Niemitalo wrote:
>
> Thomas wrote those features wouldn't belong in /hurd/term, so I'm
> writing a separate translator.
Mmmh. I see.
> Reading from it would translate
> scancodes from the keyboard, and writing to it would interpret
> escape sequences and poke characters in video memory. The output
> half now lacks only virtual consoles, scrollback and beeping.
Sounds good. Had you told earlier that you make such a steady progress,
I probably would not have spent the last days to get the linux console working.
(Are you subscribed to bug-hurd? You must have noticed my screams for help :)
> > What you mean should probably be handled by a device similar to framebuffer
> > device in Linux.
>
> Are you implying that device wouldn't parse the escape sequences?
Sorry, I hadn't all my senses together when writing this.
> E0 scancode
> line <--- keymap <--- translation <--- inb()
> sh <---> discipline
> ---> esc seq --> framebuffer ---> poke to
> parser for each vc vid mem
>
> The line discipline is handled by /hurd/term. I imagine
> everything at its right side would be in /hurd/console, except
> the inb() which would stay in the kernel. How would you split
> them up?
Looks great! I have to admit I didn't know much about terminals at all until
a few days ago, but I am learning fast.
I think what you are doing is great (as it seems to give fast results, fits
nice into the Hurd philosophy and the current code and gives you practice
in writing translators).
However, I still think it would be good to take a look at KGI, before you
start to reinvent the wheel. But if you limit yourself to one EGA adapter and
one input keyboard, there is no danger in doing so, and porting KGI would
probably be a major undertaking.
Have you looked at KGI yet? It is supposed to enable multihead/multiinput
terminals. It virtualizes the mouse device. It has interfaces for libggi,
enabling us to use the vgalib emulation and X server from the GGI project.
It also has a terminal server.
I don't know how much work it would be to form KGI into a proper Hurd
translator. Can you take a look at it? A snapshot can be found in
http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/~sse/ggi/.
Also, how interacts your translator with the kernel logger? How does it
interact with the keyboard driver (we need to make sure we can get X working
with it in some way). Those are all questions I don't know an answer for
(I face the same questions with the linux console driver in GNU Mach).
Thanks,
Marcus
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