Re: LANANA: To Pending Device Number Registrants

James Simmons
2001-05-15T17:45:03Z

> > I would use write except we use write to draw into the framebuffer. If I
> > write to the framebuffer with that data the only thing that will happen is
> > I will get pretty colors on my screen.
>
> Yes. And we also use write to send data to printer. So what? Nobody makes
> you use the same file.

Well creating a new device wouldn't make linus happen right now. I do
agree ioctl calls are evil!!!! You only have X amount of them. With write
you can have infinte amounts of different functions to perform on a
device. I didn't design fbdev :-( If I did it would have been far
different. I do plan on some day merging drm and fbdev into one interface. So
I plan to change this behavior. I like to see this interface ioctl-less
(is their such a word ???). You mmap to alter buffers. Mmap is much more
flexiable than write for graphics buffers anyways. You use write to pass
"data" to the driver.