Re: [Ipodlinux-devel] Graphics library...

[Bernard L. <le...@bo...>]

Hi Damien,

one of the most common questions I get is what about a GUI so I'm sure a
few people would be interested ;)  If you'd like I can host your work as
part of the ipodlinux project.

Ideally I had thought something like microwindows or nanogui would be
the way to go, but a custom library would also be fine.

As for your questions, I'm not too sure about the speed of the iPod
display.  Certainly updating the changed portions of the screen is much
faster than redrawing the entire display.  Up till now I don't know that
anyone has done much experimentation (at least publically!) with the
display capabilities of the iPod.

As for userland API versus kernel.  It would be nice to keep
applications written to standard APIs etc wherever possible, the main
reason so that standard Linux apps will then "just work" but it also
keeps the emulation environment simple (in the best case a standard
Linux box!).  I can imagine wrapper APIs would be useful in certain
cases, e.g. for the piezo a library wraps the serial functions into a
simple sound_piezo() type function.

The framebuffer might also be a good case, but then just going via
/dev/fb0 should work too.

cheers,
bern.

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 10:07, damien marchal wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> as i said in a previous post, i have done a tiny (and buggy) graphics 
> library for the ipod with a pseudo emulator (in opengl) to make the 
> developpement easier. (i have just readed about nanogui from the mailing 
>   list archive)
> 
> Currently i have:
> - drawHorizLines
> - putPixel
> - get/setContrast
> - putSprite
> - drawFont with font size of 6x11 et 8x8
> 
> as soon as debugged (the putsprite at any position give me a headache) i 
> 'll release this. I also have a tool to convert from header files 
> (exported by gimp) to ipod_sprite format.
> 
> If you have, 4 colors artwork, fonts, images, icons
> i'm very interrested in collecting them.
> 
> 
> The questions now...
> 
> Do somebody has informations about the ipod display ?
> - speed in the differents mode ?
> - is it better to directly render on the screen or having a double 
> buffer in memory (like in fb) ?
> - how to render viewable basic animation ?
> 
> For what i know, incremental update is much more viewable than deleting 
> everything followed by a redraw (i'm so sad that ipod haven't an GBA 
> display :) )
> 
> 
> The existential part know:
> 
> Currently i disconnect the fb driver of the kernel and i directly 
> address the screen from an userland API. Somebody has a better solution ?
> 
> In my point of view a usermode api that access to ipod-hardware is bad 
> but easier than doing fully Posix-Apm-fb-compilant.
> 
> What is yours opinions ?
> 
> What about doing a complete ipod-API for all hardware access (for 
> individual components sleep mode, get/set processor speed, screen 
> access, timer, keypad. As far as i know their is no protected-mode
> in uClinux so their is no problem to do this.
> 
> Cheers,
> Damien Marchal.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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