Re: MADO questions

Hi,

Mike A Larson wrote:
>
> Gavin Nicol wrote (regarding a minimalist MADO):
> >
> > That is actually the development plan. As I said, the problem is
> > time. I don't even have much time to sleep this month. That;s why I'm
> > awake now... (12:30 in Japan...)
>
> Perhaps you could post a list of sub-projects, along with current status,
> related to the minimalist version of the windowing system. It may
> be possible that someone reading this mailing list would volunteer
> to help out if they knew more details about what needs to be done.

Well I'm not sure about MADO, but I've just started to rework the code I did
for bitblt last year - I'm splitting things up a little. Previously bitblt
was going to be something like the Xfree86 servers and include support for
most video chips in one server - this causes a few performance issues, but
more importantly makes it very difficult to use any really neat features
provided by just one chip. It also causes severe code bloat :-(

My new approach is to redefine things somewhat, have a server
per-chipset-type with an autoprobe loader that will detect video adaptors
and execs the correct bitblt server(s) - this gives the same effect as the
fully integrated approach. Alternatively it will be possible to just kick
off the server(s) that you know you need. I'm reworking some of my older
stuff into libraries to simplify the task of writing the individual servers.

There are a couple of extra benefits to this approach - one is that it
becomes much simpler to have multiple bitblts running at once (memory usage
is better). Another is that it allows for very specialised, highly
optimised bitblt servers for particular tasks (I can imagine say a very fast
"mode 13" server for 320x200x256 with *lots* of fast assembly routines for
games or animation work). Finally, having thrown off the idea of doing
everything in one server I can start to code up a server with a bitblt
interface for printers (I wrote support for 9 pin, 24 pin and HP laserjet
printers in some dos code 5 or 6 years ago so I should be able to rework
this).

Another advantage to this approach of course is that it makes it *much*
easier for other people to code up support for their own video adaptors :-)

I'm hoping to get some time over the Easter break to define the interface
details and code up a simple VGA and a Hercules server and see how they
behave.

                                Regards,
                                Dave
Received on Wed Apr 19 07:12:07 1995