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SubjectRe: GGI Project Unhappy On Linux
Date
Marek,

Here's the point that I've been trying to get across -- you don't need
to implement GDI to use one of these printers. You need to create a
bitmap and send it to the printer in a specific manner. The *only*
thing that needs to be reverse-engineered is the protocol for sending
this bitmap to the printer. You don't need to implement GDI to do this.

The "GDI-only" video cards are the same deal. Basically, they still
know how to draw a line, etc. You aren't going to send GDI function
calls to the video card -- that's too much overhead. It doesn't want or
need to know about the GDI hWnd, or any other things. The *driver*
handles that. The only difference from today might be some accelerator
functions to convert a MS DIB (device-independent bitmap) to a
device-dependent bitmap and DMA it to the card, or other functions that
convert Windows-style data structures for use with the card.

It's still going to have a framebuffer, and a way to access it (DirectX,
anyone?). That, they won't be able to do away with. Even if they do,
and have the "framebuffer" a DIB on the card (which is a very insane
thought -- devices like that are usually OS-version dependent and don't
last long. Example: Apple 8*24 GC video card, circa 1993. Don't work
with MacOS 7.1 or later.) Also, I can't see them being cheaper. This
just *adds* complexity to the card. Drivers are cheap compared to
chips.

I *can* see them eliminating text mode. That sucks. But it doesn't
mean that a card without a text mode can't work with Linux, or anything
else. See fbcon.c.

Sorry to rant at you this much, but I'm getting tired of the flamewar
too.

Josh Buysse
buyssej@coffman.umn.edu


---- message ends ----

>I see. But that makes the printer virtually unusable on most other
platforms
>than it was designed for? So, to use it on Linux one would have to
implement
>the GDI engine?
>And what about video cards that implement in hardware functions
traditionally
>found in the software driver? They certainly give better performance
but they
>are tied to one particular OS interface - such cards exist, so what
other OSes
>trying to use the card have to do? They need to implement the interface
used
>on the other OS, thus effectively giving up their original solutions
and
>interfaces - which would not always be a gain.
>
>best wishes, marek
>---
>Writing software is more fun than working.
>
>
>-
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