Re: [Freedos-user] display-0.13b not know VGA ?

[Frantisek H. <fr...@ha...>]

Eric Auer wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> Not sure if this helps, but DISPLAY CON=(EGA,,1) should
> be sufficient for all your needs. For the font support,
> EGA is pretty much the same as VGA and display only is
> for loading custom fonts. If you do not plan to load a
> non-BIOS font, you do not even need display at all. The
> documentation of an older version says that VGA did set
> a certain number of font sizes, while EGA autodetected
> which font sizes exist (usually 8x8, 14 and 16 pixels).
> 
> Looking at the source, EGA meant autodetect, EGA 8 did
> mean one font, LCD the same, EGA 14 two fonts, VGA did
> mean three fonts and only CGA meant different hardware.
> 
> Note that newer VGA BIOS may miss 8x14 built-in fonts,
> but you can load a custom DOS font instead. There also
> are tools doing ONLY that, using less RAM than DISPLAY.
> 
> Regards, Eric
> 
> PS: Still happy easter to everybody :-)
> 
>> 	display con=(vga,437,2)
>> then I got error:
>>
>> FreeDOS DISPLAY ver. 0.13b
>> Syntax error (006) Unknown hardware device name
>>
>> When I use 'ega' instead of 'vga', then all is fine. Thus, where is
>> problem? In display-0.13b, or in DOSEMU, or in my HW, or elsewhere?

Hallo Eric,

thanks for valuable informations. I (roughly) understand small
differences between EGA and VGA, but relationship between (emulated)
video HW, Linux X or console fonts, dosemu and DOS display is maybe
more complex. And I not know exactly how all thing works, especially
what is able to do dosemu in this area.

For example (from my dosemu/FreeDOS undex X Window tests):

1) Using default VGA X font & without load DOS display - then setting
mode con cols=132 lines=43 result in garbage on screen. With loaded
display it works fine. In both cases 'mode con' print
 "VESA mode 0x010A: 132 x 43 with 8 x 11 font."

Which is interesting, when I specify some monospaced iso-10646 X font
(e.g. "-urw-nimbus mono l-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso10646-1"),
then dosemu/FreeDOS display them fine even without loading display.exe
(including displaying e.g. my cp852 characters).

2) Even in standard 80 x 25 resolution, when I use standard VGA font
and DOS display, then I can use X Window keyboard layout switching
(between Czech and English) and in DOS all characters are displayed
fine. This technique (using only X Win keyboard layout switching for
both DOS and X Linux programs, without need for some DOS charset/kbd
switching seems very friendly and native for me.

Without display, when I switch keyboard layout in X to Czech, then
in DOS displayed characters are bad (displayed are probably their
cp437 equivalents (╪ instead of ě, à instead of ů, etc.)		

Thus it seems as DOS display driver has some function even under
the dosemu emulator, therefore I prefer to leave it in autoexec.bat
And I see some messages from 'mode con cols=Y lines=X' result, as:

VESA mode 0x0108: 80 x 60 with 8 x 8 font.
VESA mode 0x0109: 132 x 25 with 8 x 14 font.
VESA mode 0x010A: 132 x 43 with 8 x 11 font.
VESA mode 0x010C: 132 x 60 with 8 x 8 font.

thus I doubt, when is sufficient run display exe only with (as you
suggest) parameter 'CON=(EGA,,1)' (i.e. with only one buffer).

And You write that are other tools than display.exe, with smaller
memory footprint - can You, please, name some of them? And, which is
essential for me, will these tools work with DOSEMU?

Thanks in advance, Franta Hanzlik