From: Jon M. Taylor <taylorj@ecs.csus.edu>
  To  : Jason McMullan <jmcc@ontv.com>
  Date: Fri, 7 Aug 1998 12:45:55 -0700 (PDT)

Re: vga kgicon problem summary

On 7 Aug 1998, Jason McMullan wrote:

> Brian Julin <bri@forcade.calyx.net> wrote with confidence:
> > 
> > 2) The real fix is to allow the kgi driver to offer a scroller via
> > kgi_text_operations and write a framebuffer driver that uses the kgi 
> > scroller's framebuffer operations.  What I'm suggesting is a move to 
> > the Degas drivers, as this also I believe will make the mode.fb trouble
> > go away; they use virtual addresses in the extended mode.fb.* struct.  The
> > only problem here is a few of them don't have complete text-->dpp/bpp
> > fixes, but a few of us had that fixed in our own private
> > sources already.
> >
> 
>    Please note that that scroller subsystem is a big part of GGI
> Console. We need to chat with Steffen (#kgi channel on irc.ggi-project.org?) 
> about where is code is and how to integrate the scroller work
> without having to drag in all of GGI Console.

	I wouldn't favor this.  We are just now getting to a more clean
and logical separation of components within GGI.  Lack of this caused us
problems in the past.  IMHO, all parts of GGI (GGI Console, LibGGI, KGI,
KGI drivers, KII) should be usable on their own or in any combination with
other GGI parts.  In particular video drivers and consoles should remain
separated, whether they be fbcon/fbdev or GGI Console/KGI.

	KGI should provide the best video card drivers it can, nothing
more.  It should not make assumptions about how those drivers are to be
used, by the console or anything else.  Hardware device drivers are there
to allow access to the raw hardware functionality.  If we embed
console-related abstractions like a scroller into KGI, what happens when
someone wants to use KGI in an OS which doesn't use consoles or anything 
similar to consoles?  They would probably have to do something like 
kgicon - pull the drivers away from the driver API (KGI), write another 
less restrictive API and plug them into that.

Jon

---
'Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in 
becoming one with God.'
	- Scientist G. Richard Seed