Re: [Gterm-discuss] Things for me to do

[Jörg S. <joe...@we...>]

On Fri, 13 Dec 2002 10:49:30 -0800 (PST)
Timothy Miller <th...@ya...> wrote:

> I've just actually subscribed to the list.  I'd been reading on the web
> before, but there are things I should respond to.
> 
> Joerg said:
> 
>  > 2. port to FreeBSD
>  
>  The same. Theosib, can you chance the project overview next week? ;-)
> 
> 
> Let me know whatever changes you would like to be made to the
> documentation, and I will make them.  Also feel free to make your own
> mods to it; if you want me to check things, just check in to CVS what
> you write, and I can edit it for structure, etc.
> 
> As for the overview, are you referring to the short description on the
> summary page or the one at gterm.sourceforge.net?  Tell me what you
> want, and I will do it.

Jep. Since FreeBSD is working (I am using it...), it should be added to the
OS list.

> 
> Additionally, both of you guys are project administrators, and although
> I think we should all agree on changes before they are made, you are
> able to make them, so you don't always have to ask me.  But on the
> other hand, I am willing to do my share of the work on the project.

Agreed, of course.

> 
> My attitude towards GTerm is this:  Although I wrote it initially, you
> guys are now making the contributions, and you can have whatever
> influence you want.  I would like to have the original credit, but by
> nature of being under a GNU license, it is Free Software.  I claim some
> ownership, because I have an emotional attachment to it, but I wish to
> claim far less control by comparison, and I am willing to share in
> everything.

I always have those feelings for my own programs (altough I earn my money
with them), so I can understand you completely.

> 
> 
> Also, another issue is the matter of the license.  I would prefer that
> the library remain under LGPL, but it was suggested that we put it
> under GPL.  Well, there's the library part and there's the X terminal
> example part.  We could put the latter under GPL.  You guys let me know
> what you want, and we'll come to an agreement on it.

I think LGPL for the libgterm.a (so?) and GPL for the rest would be nice.
Just a side note: Should the pseudo terminal handling be part of the lib?
At the moment it is.

> 
> Finally, I had been working on a spin-off of GTerm which was designed
> for an embedded terminal.  I had designed the FPGA code, and I'd coded
> the software for a small embedded processor.  Unfortunately, I was
> never able to get an FPGA and CPU combination that I felt was
> cost-effective and sufficiently capable.  What I wrote is entirely in
> C.  It's pretty far along in capability.  It's been a while, but as I
> recall, all I had left to do was scour vt100.net to make sure I was as
> compliant as possible.  I am interested in having you two look at it
> (in confidence) and extract from it any ideas you want for adding to
> GTerm.  I reserve the right to use the original C code for a real
> terminal in the future.

Sounds interesting. I thought about porting the library back to C somewhere
in the future, to replace the vt emulation core in the BSD kernel. Having a really
full featured terminal with VT100 compliance, font upload, UTF8 and history support,
with support for advanced text modes (e.g. 128x48 with 16x8 pixel fonts on a SVGA
screen) and reasonable price - the dream of every Emacs user :-)
OK, I was dreaming, still a lot of work to do...

One more thing to add concerning FreeBSD and other OS in general. It's this
utmp support. Under FreeBSD is has a different (simpler) structure, so there
we need a compilation switch anyway. Do you agree to keep the utmp support
optional? Without, gterm doesn't need any increasedl rights, at least under
FreeBSD 5 and Linux with Unix 98.

Regards, Joerg