Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] Re: [linux-fbdev] Is a FontCache worth implementing ?

[Sven L. <lu...@dp...>]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 12:16:06PM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> > Textures is only one of the way of doing this. I guess games oriented 3dfx HW
> > will only have textures, and not dedicated 2d font mapping stuff, like bitmap
> > expansion or direct glyph writing ?
> 
> Before we go to far into this discussion, all we want is a (fast) text console
> implementation. That means
>   - rectangle copy
>   - rectangle fill
>   - monochrome expansion for text drawing
>   - pixmap drawing for penguin

Yes, sure, ...

> No OpenGL, mesa, DRM, DRI, textures, ...!

Err, i was speaking of userland accelerated mesa support, not openGL in fbdev,
which i know will not be welcome in the kernel.

That said :

Some cards do text drawing by applying textures, i think i saw some such
in the X permedia2 driver, not sure though

There were speaks of DMA, which we can do, as opposed to X which needs
kernel support for it. This could (well maybe) be a good thing. But if i
understood all things correctly, the drm kernel module was writen to
permit X/OpenGL to do DMA accesses to the chip, that is filling buffers
that are then DMA sent to the chip. I may be wrong, but i had the
impression that it is not sane us to do DMA without speaking to DRM about it.

That said, maybe using DMA is not the nicest thing to do, maybe it is
wastefull for us, ...

Also there is the fact that on most chips, the using of DRM/DRI on X and fbdev
together is often severly broken, or is it ?

That said, i am not aware of the last kernel politics regarding this, so
please excuse me if i may have tripped into something best laid dormant.

Friendly,

Sven Luther