[Linux-fbdev-devel] Re: Help from Gurus on modes and timing and frame buffers needed!

[Benjamin H. <be...@ke...>]

Given all the cruft about video modes & flat panels lately, what about
adding some generic fbdev mode management (extending modedb) this way:
All driver that know how to retreive DDC/EDID informations or the old
mac mode sense pins, provide this to the modedb module.

This module is responsible for using that info and command line infos
to produce a sensible default display mode. It has a userland interface
to make these infos easily available to candidate mode switchers (like
MOL for example, but also a distribution XFree autoconfig tool).

It also has an event interface for drivers that can autodetect hotplug
and unplug of the video connector. Actually, it could be in a more
central place in fbdev arch and also do heads management.

In this case, drivers would register potential "heads" (connectors)
indicating if they are independant or not (can only do mirroring), and
if something is actually connected to them (most cards seem to be able
to tell it).

We can have things like mirror-only heads that can have a different
mode timing, our current interface doesn't seem really nice for it.
This is classical on some laptops where the LCD is at 60hz, but you
can mirror with a better refresh rate.

What do you think ?

I beleive the first step is to add some kind of DDC/EDID parser to modedb
that returns a matching mode entry and maybe merge the old mac-sensing codes
into it (using a table mac-mode -> modedb mode).


Ben.