Re: Screensavers for the console

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 12:00:30AM +0200, M. Gerards wrote:
> /* Start the screensaver.  */
> error_t ssaver_start (void);
> 
> /* Stop the screensaver.  */
> error_t ssaver_stop (void);

I would like to see several stages, that correspond to modern power saving
facilities of display hardware.

> /* Kind of states that should be saved/restored with
>    display_save_state and display_restore_state.  */

Nothing is saved.  After a wakeup event, the generic code will have to do a
complete refresh.

> int display_supports_grapics (void);

graphic support can only be implemented by device specific screensavers
coming with the graphic display hardware driver.  There has to be a limit,
and my current limit is that I don't any graphicish in the console
interfaces.  What happens internal to a display driver, I don't care.

If you can find a way to have the same screensavers communicate via
graphicish display drivers over an internal interface, so that
screensaver_flying_horseshit can be used with a vga and braille driver, then
I am fine with that.  But that would be opaque to the generic code.

I believe that any code that handles graphic needs a lot of careful design
to achieve an acceptable universality and performance.  Again, you are
talking about an underlying framebuffer interface without actually carrying
it through.  Of course, if you want to carry it through, that would be
great, but I think that would have to be started from scratch, and not put
half-heartedly on top of the text console.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    marcus@gnu.org
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/