Re: [announce 0/7] fbsplash - The Framebuffer Splash

[Jon Smirl <jonsmirl@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 13:01:15 +0800, Antonino A. Daplas
<adaplas@hotpop.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 08 March 2005 09:57, Michal Januszewski wrote:
> > Fbsplash - The Framebuffer Splash - is a feature that allows displaying
> > images in the background of consoles that use fbcon. The project is
> > partially descended from bootsplash.
> >
> > Unlike bootsplash, fbsplash has no in-kernel image decoder. Picture
> > decompression is handled by a userspace helper which provides raw image
> > data to the kernel. There is also no support for things like the silent
> > mode and progress bars, as these are best handled by userspace programs.
> >
> 
> If splash support is really, really, really wanted in the kernel, it's probably better
> to just add minimal Overlay support for the framebuffer.  If overlay is added, it
> won't be necessary to modify fbcon and the drivers, just core fb.
> 
> We can have 3 levels of support.  In it's most basic form, we have the display
> layer (what get's shown in your monitor) plus 2 buffers in system ram, the
> primary layer (where the console output is written) and the overlay, the
> static image in raw framebuffer format.  Then we replace the basic
> framebuffer operations (imageblit, fillrect and copyarea) with ones that
> will read the contents of both buffers, do basic raster ops (colorkey, alpha
> blend, etc) before writing to the actual display buffer.
> 
> The next level is both buffers are in video ram. This will need basic driver
> support, at least to subdivide the framebuffer memory to display, primary,
> and overlay.  We can use the drivers accelerated drawing functions to
> write to the primary layer, then use software to write the processed
> contents to the display layer.
> 
> Finally, we can enable full hardware video overlay.

Another idea would be to build a console is user space. Think of it as
a full screen xterm. A user space console has access to full hardware
acceleration using the DRM interface.

-- 
Jon Smirl
jonsmirl@gmail.com


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