[lcd4linux] Request for enhancement of Bar Widget for the graphical driver

[Dmitry Y. <ye...@gm...>]

Hi there,

I'm not sure if this is the best way to reach out to lcd4linux developers,
so please feel free to forward it to the proper addresses.

First of all, I wanted to thank everyone for such a great utility! I started
using it recently on my router and NAS with the help of small Coby DP-152
dpf's.

The reason for my contacting developers is a request for enhancement of Bar
Widget for the graphical driver. Many use cases for the Bar Widget require
utilization of two expressions, but split-bar is not natural/useful in some
situations. For example:
- on small screens
- for CPU or RAM usage indicators when values should stack up (e.g. show CPU
as "user + system + idle"; and RAM as "used + buffers + free")
- for indicators that would benefit from a threshold notification (e.g.
filesystem utilization when it reaches 90% or other preferred threshold)

The enhancement that I'd like to propose will introduce the following new
behaviors of bar gauges - have them overlay each other (obviously using
different colors) and be able to choose one of two modes:
1) smaller gauge is always on top of the bigger one; and use the first gauge
(a.k.a. bar0) in case they are equal - this mode will be introduced as style
'Y', and 'y' for 'Y'+'H'
2) first gauge (the bar0) is always on top of the second (the bar1) - will
be called style 'F', a 'f' for 'F'+'H'

I've already prepared the changes and made some optimizations to the part of
the code that renders the widget for the graphical driver. The changes are
100% backward compatible.  The patch to the latest SVN revision is attached
as well as configuration examples to demonstrate the new modes.  Could
someone please review the changes and advice whether anything else needs to
be changed?  If any, I'll look into the suggestion(s) to make the changes
ready for submission into trunk.

Please let me know if you'd like me to prepare some gif-animations to
demonstrate the new behavior or if you need any explanation/comments to the
code. 

Thanks,

:-Dmitry