[PATCH 3/3] drm/fourcc: Add documentation around drm_format_info

Louis Chauvet
2024-04-09T10:04:42Z

Let's provide more details about the drm_format_info structure because
its content may not be straightforward for someone not used to video
formats and drm internals.

Signed-off-by: Louis Chauvet <louis.chauvet@bootlin.com>
---
include/drm/drm_fourcc.h | 45 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------
1 file changed, 38 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/drm/drm_fourcc.h b/include/drm/drm_fourcc.h
index ccf91daa4307..66cc30e28f79 100644
--- a/include/drm/drm_fourcc.h
+++ b/include/drm/drm_fourcc.h
@@ -58,6 +58,44 @@ struct drm_mode_fb_cmd2;

/**
* struct drm_format_info - information about a DRM format
+ *
+ * A drm_format_info describes how planes and pixels are stored in memory.
+ *
+ * Some format like YUV can have multiple planes, counted in @num_planes. It
+ * means that a full pixel can be stored in multiple non-continuous buffers.
+ * For example, NV12 is a YUV format using two planes: one for the Y values and
+ * one for the UV values.
+ *
+ * On each plane, the "pixel" unit can be different in case of subsampling. For
+ * example with the NV12 format, a pixel in the UV plane is used for four pixels
+ * in the Y plane.
+ * The fields @hsub and @vsub are the relation between the size of the main
+ * plane and the size of the subsampled planes in pixels:
+ * plane[0] width = hsub * plane[1] width
+ * plane[0] height = vsub * plane[1] height
+ *
+ * In some formats, pixels are not independent in memory. It can be a packed
+ * representation to store more pixels per byte (for example P030 uses 4 bytes
+ * for three 10 bit pixels). It can also be used to represent tiled formats,
+ * where a continuous buffer in memory can represent a rectangle of pixels (for
+ * example, in DRM_FORMAT_Y0L0, a buffer of 8 bytes represents a 2x2 pixel
+ * region of the picture).
+ * The field @char_per_block is the size of a block on a specific plane, in
+ * bytes.
+ * The fields @block_w and @block_h are the size of a block in pixels.
+ *
+ * The older format representation (which only uses @cpp, kept for historical
+ * reasons because there are a lot of places in drivers where it's used) is
+ * assuming that a block is always 1x1 pixel.
+ *
+ * To keep the compatibility with older format representations and treat block
+ * and non-block formats in the same way one should use:
+ * - @char_per_block to access the size of a block on a specific plane, in
+ * bytes.
+ * - drm_format_info_block_width() to access the width of a block of a
+ * specific plane, in pixels.
+ * - drm_format_info_block_height() to access the height of a block of a
+ * specific plane, in pixels.
*/
struct drm_format_info {
/** @format: 4CC format identifier (DRM_FORMAT_*) */
@@ -97,13 +135,6 @@ struct drm_format_info {
* formats for which the memory needed for a single pixel is not
* byte aligned.
*
- * @cpp has been kept for historical reasons because there are
- * a lot of places in drivers where it's used. In drm core for
- * generic code paths the preferred way is to use
- * @char_per_block, drm_format_info_block_width() and
- * drm_format_info_block_height() which allows handling both
- * block and non-block formats in the same way.
- *
* For formats that are intended to be used only with non-linear
* modifiers both @cpp and @char_per_block must be 0 in the
* generic format table. Drivers could supply accurate

--
2.43.0