Oh gone are the days when even the kernel alone will fit on one floppy =:^)
> > > Best to stick with 'standard' graphic modes [when graphics is available
> > > at all]. e.g. 640x480x16 [720x480x16? Just a weird mode that might
> > > work]
> >
> > 720x480x16 _might_ work, just like 640x480x256 _might_ work. (Wow, this
> > reminds me of my days playing around with overscan on the Atari ST...)
>
> Yep, it's that kinda thing. According to the mail on the subject,
> 720x350 approx same as 640x350 with 9th bit enabled, and a bit of
> twiddling :) 720x350x16 works perfectly BTW. Don't ask me how to enable
> 8bpp in strange >320x200 resolutions - even though there's modeX in up to
> 576x480 or something weird like that :)
I never did much VGA coding, which might explain my ignorance as to standard
modes and suchlike. I suppose that if we can get 640x?x256 (through GGI,
natch) we use it, otherwise drop down to 320x200x256, do a little pixel
mix-and-twiddle here and there, and hope no one tried to do line art =:^)
> > > although you are best off in a mode easily portable to other
> > > platforms [Sparc,Mips,et al. As far as I know Alpha port not a problem -
> > > they seem to use VGA cards - just not in 'traditional' locations].
> >
> > Portability is a difficult issue to consider. It may not be an issue if we
> > punt() this one to the bowels of the arch/ dungeon. Given that, across
> > platforms, 640x400 is about as standard as we can reasonably get. (Consider
> > all the 68k machines with NTSC-style video output... or CGA, for that
> > matter.)
>
> Then WHY doesn't it work on my system? <silly pout mode on> I can't see
> it as standard if it _DOESN'T_ work on my system! <silly pout mode off>
Okay, then, we'll use 160x100x16! Hey, that even works on CGA! =:^)
> > On PC/VGA we can flip to 640x480 and blank the top and bottom forty
> > scanlines. (On EGA we lose a bit of the pic.) On the Sparc mono
> > (1152x900?) we must convert to monochrome (dither?!), and as for sizing, we
> > can either put a big border around the image or we can scale it to fit. On
> > the Amiga we can enter 640x400 interlace mode for old hardware or pick an
> > advanced mode if we can, all depending on what kind of graphics interface
> > the 68k guys come up with. Etc. etc.
>
> Okay, no probby. Good solution :) According to the last bit on the 68K
> port - 'cause Linus hasn't heard from these people in aeons, he considers
> the project dead. So who knows, eh?
Who knows indeed. That's rather a shame, as it would have been nice to have
dropped an '030 into my antique A1000 and run X over the serial port =:^)
Alternately to make things simple we could always scale it to whatever Joe
User can run (maxing out at 640x480x? as 100% of VGA cards are exceptionally
inept at detemining what sync rates their attached monitors can handle,
unless a local configuration mechanism will be employed in GGI). So we wind
up having to write a helluva GIF viewer in kernelspace. Whee.
> Ah well, later, eh?
> - Teunis
Best,
-jhp
-- Jon Pickard * 149 Olive St #45 * Paso Robles, CA 93446 * +1 805 2399518 "He singlehandedly destroyed the multibillion-dollar commercial Unix industry and yet he has a self-deprecating sense of humor. That means one thing: Linus rules!" -Paul G. Steffen, psteffen@cris.com, on Linus Torvalds