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  From: Michael Gersten <michael@stb.info.com>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Sun, 8 Aug 99 00:32 PDT

Re: GL, X, accel and ggi

>In fact you don't reailize the hard time linus gives the
>fbcon developers. He hates fbcon and is very glad very few people use it
>on intel platforms.

Then tell Linus that he is dead wrong on this issue. DEAD wrong.

One word: Eyesight.

I have enough trouble taking the VESA 72.5 HZ display. I've got a
120 HZ monitor (actually, approx 117 according to vgatune). I can
notice the difference when I set it below 100 in Windows 95.  (90HZ
is noticable worse than 100 HZ; 100 or 120 looks the same but
activates different monitor timings. Anything below 90 is very
worse.).

On Windows 95, I can easily set an 8 x 12 font (msdos prompt window),
and move the window so that the window edges are off the screen,
giving me the full width of 80 characters at 640x480..

In X, I cannot do this easily at all. And, even if I could, for
whatever reason, none of the X fonts are as readable as the windows
font.  The really good font is altb-8x16, which for some reason
isn't the default text font, and is too big for an X window. 

If I am using plain console text mode, I have to use SVGATextMode
to set a new text mode. Well, guess what? SVGATextMode only supports
SVGA standards. That means that if my graphics card had clocks, I
would be stuck to the first 4. Well, I've got a clock chip, not
fixed clocks -- I can't get any faster timings than plain SVGA in
text mode out of it. (ok, so maybe it's VESA 72 not SVGA 60. It's
still too slow.)

I'm trying to get 2.2 configured so that it comes out small enough
to compile in the FBCon + Permedia KGI drivers, just so I can run
that thing in a way that doesn't hurt my eyes.

The ultimate problem? You've got SVGALib, X, SuperProbe, and
SVGATextMode, all of which need to play with these registers, all
of which have different methods for playing, all of which do
different things, with different bugs.

Either you write a SVGAHardwareLib that has all the smarts of every
board, or you write a kernel module for each board, or you have to
modify 4 different graphics programs every time you want to support
a new board. And you have to program in all the details of the
various text vs graphics modes, etc; OR, just run everything in
graphics mode and emulate the text.

Why use graphics mode? Better quality display.  Why use text mode?
"Faster". Ha. Faster means something when you are talking about a
8086, or a 286 at 16 Mhz. Today we're talking a pentium at 133 on
a slow machine (note that the givaway computers are faster than
that.)

(For what it's worth, I run 11 inches across for 80 character on
my monitor).

The point here is not to say that it has to be in graphics mode.
The point here is to not say that it must be text mode.

Now, maybe I'm not the norm; maybe my eyes are worse than most
programmers. Fine. Just don't say that the only people expected to
use Linux are those with great eyesight. Design a system that can
be used by people with normal eyes, or slightly deteriorated eyes.

And if that means that, given the crappy design of IBM display
hardware, that you are switching to graphics mode to make text
display better, then you are switching to graphics mode to make
text display better.

Michael

p.s. Does anyone have timings for an X display that will give me
640 by 480 on the INSIDE of an X window, taking into account window
boarders and a scroll bar, and a title bar, and menus, and the
oversized icons at the bottom of the screen? My monitor does 117
vertical, 64.8 horizontal; my graphics card has a 230 dot clock
(yea, way overpowered for the monitor.) [Extra credit: 800 x 600
on the inside]

p.p.s. For that matter, does anyone have a replacement for vgatune
that lets me play with all of the timing numbers individually rather
than being forced to assume one of the "standard" sizes? Please
don't say "If you don't like it, write it" -- I have better things
to do with my time. (Or is this a limit of X -- that to play with
all of the numbers would be impossible within X?)

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