Re: [AD] GGI patch for 3.9.21

[Shawn Hargreaves <shawn@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Peter Wang <tjaden@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> I wasn't just thinking of GFX_SAFE however, as it is quite annoying to 
> have to quit X and restart just to run an 8 bit program, especially when 
> I've got stuff downloading in the background.

Sure, for X it's nice to have the option of emulating other color depths. I 
don't think this is so relevant to a GGI driver, though.

> > Is there really any benefit to using GGI under X, given that we will 
> > soon have our own native X code?
> 
> Well, for now, it is very useful, as I'd be able to start coding in X.

That's a wrong reason to implement it, though. We will have proper X support 
just as soon as it finishes being written!

> So that we don't go through too many layers, it's obviously best to avoid 
> as much of GGI as we can.  But I would like the option of choosing whether 
> or not I use GGI, as one day they might come up with a cool target, eg. 
> KGI.

I quite agree, GGI is a very worthwhile thing to support as a driver target, 
in order to access KGI, all their hardware accelerated routines, etc. But I 
think it has value mostly as a high performance, fullscreen interface for 
use in the 'finished' type software. When you want the windowed modes that 
interface with X for easy development and debugging, I think native X code 
is more suitable (and certainly more portable! GGI claims to be cross 
platform, but is focused very heavily on Linux, while proper X code runs on 
anything).

So my advice would be to use GGI as a driver option for setting fullscreen 
console graphics modes, but ignore the parts of it which try to be a generic 
API sitting on top of other driver systems. 

> Since Allegro now has functions to control switching behavior, it'd be 
> best if those functions did the same thing with all targets. What worked 
> for the GGI people with svgalib should work for us. The hunter becomes the 
> hunted :)

I started working on an SVGAlib driver today: it doesn't work yet, but is 
getting there. I'll copy the code from the GGI sources to disable the 
SVGAlib console control, and then you can copy it again to disable the GGI 
console control, and then somebody can write a GGI target that sits on top 
of Allegro and steals console control back for GGI, and we can all spend the 
rest of eternity chasing each other's tails in an endless spiral of 
parasitism :-)



--
Shawn Hargreaves - shawn@xxxxxxxxxx - http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/
"A binary is barely software: it's more like hardware on a floppy disk."