Re: [MiNT] fVDI TTF issues

[Johan Klockars <johan@klockars.net>]

> > Yes, I know, but I didn't find other way of how to use FreeType except
> > porting it completely to kernel space.
> 
> You can always implement it as daemon or something like that that
> communicate over a pipe or such thing.

Could a pipe be used to communicate with a kernel module?

Anyway, if the fVDI kernel module was made to actually support a few
of the normal file/device handling functions (some or all of open, close,
read, write, ioctl, fselect), fast bidirectional communication with
the FreeType engine running as a normal process would be possible.

> > BTW: What I/O functions should I use from within the kernel module so that
> > they would perform in the kernel context itself?
> 
> As I said, from interrupt handler you can't call very much and especially

I don't think he's actually talking about running from inside an
interrupt handler. The only stuff that would run from inside that in
fVDI would be mouse and keyboard handling (including pointer movement).

> no I/O functions. This stuff must run as kernel thread or something like
> that with it's own context or it must run in a process context (btw.

I've not looked into this, but is it OK for kernel threads to open
devices and files then? fVDI will need to do something like that to
eventually be able to handle the mouse and keyboard nicely under MiNT.

> > The other problem is that I will need to wait for the fvdi.prg to be
> > initialized before I hook the VDI vector.
> 
> I think fvdi must be loaded before FreeMiNT? Otherwise it's not cleanly

Not currently.

Anyway, if checking for an active fVDI is currently too difficult,
that could easily be changed.

> pushed into kernel space.

That's certainly true.

> > BTW: Johan, I would like to see the fVDI as a kernel module and gcc
> > compilable.
> 
> Yeah, that would be nice :-)

I've promised before to make it into a kernel module.

The gcc compilable part (actually, only the assembly is a problem) has
been almost solved twice now, but neither try got all the way. I recently
received the conversion scripts (Perl, IIRC) from the second attempt,
and will try to do something about that RSN(TM).

Since it looks like I'll be forced to take a 3-4 week continuous
vacation this summer (I normally try to pick the nice days ;-), I'll
probably find the time to do something about all this in a couple of
weeks. There are some other major changes in fVDI that are only half
completed, though, which also need to be taken care of.

-- 
                        | Why are these |  e-mail:   johan@klockars.net
                        |  .signatures  |
                        | so hard to do |  WWW:      http://www.klockars.net
                        |     well?     |            (fVDI, MGIFv5, QLem)