NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/comp/os/linux/10690

Internet Message Format | 1992-09-14 | 1.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!math.fu-berlin.de!news.netmbx.de!Germany.EU.net!mcsun!news.funet.fi!hydra!klaava!wirzeniu
From: [e-mail] (Lars Wirzenius)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
Subject: Re: Can you access a virtual console directly?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 14 Sep 92 22:08:00 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 26

[e-mail] (Kenneth Falck) writes:
>It feels a bit dumb to use termcap-codes to handle the local output, if
>you know you'll be using this terminal from the virtual consoles only.

How do you know it will be used on virtual consoles only? How do you
know what kind of virtual console it is? Is it VGA, CGA, XGA, Hercules,
something else? If you happen to know it is VGA, do you know it is
80x25? 80x50? 80x43? 100x40? 100x32? 132x25? 132x44? 40x25? Some
dimensions you've never even heard of? Do you even know that it will run
on Linux? Do you _really_ want to fall into the MS-DOS trap of having a
special driver for each and every piece of hardware that the program is
supposed to run on, instead of using the driver that already exists in
the operating system?

In a word: DON'T DO IT!  (Hm..., I think my old math teacher is making
mysterious sounds. :)  You'll save yourself a lot of work and a lot
grief, and your program will be much better (read: it works on other
people's machines as well).

[ Does anybody else get tired of MS-DOS programmers whose first (and
often enough only) thought is: ``How do I write directly to video
memory?'' Perhaps we'll see requests for adding TSR support into Linux
next. Urgh. ]

--
[e-mail]