Re: keyboard & basic stuff

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

"Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan cs uml edu> writes:
> Well, I'm lost. I think I need to write an X11 app for the first time.
> I have the "X Protocol Reference Manual" and no other documentation.

Very bad idea. Get a book on some high-level toolkit; toolkits exist
for a reason.

> I'm making something that will resemble an xterm. Instead of operating
> on a stream of ASCII and escape codes from a pty, it will operate on
> low-level data. I'm displaying something like the content of /dev/vcsa
> or text-mode video memory. I need to convert X11-style (?) keystrokes
> into PC keyboard scan codes. So an Alt-F7 has to turn into the right
> key-down and key-up sequences.
>
> This is to provide a nice console for a slave CPU running Linux.
> The odd design lets a viewer disconnect, then reconnect later to
> see how the slave CPU has updated the display.
>
> I could handle the font myself, if I knew how to create an image
> pixel-by-pixel from RGB values. Color, boldness, and underlining are
> all nice to have if the implementation would be easy. I ca live without
> menu support and scroll bars.

GTK would certainly be easier than drawing a font manually. Program
will run faster too, and you'll finish writing it faster.

You could use e.g. the ZvtTerm widget in gnome-libs as an example.

> Examples? Should I be ripping apart DOSEMU for this? Is it even a
> good idea to use Gtk, or would Xlib be a better choice?

Xlib is a raw drawing layer. It draws lines and other primitives, and
lets you move blocks of pixels around. That's pretty much it. It's
very low-level.

> For now, please Cc me on any replies... how heavy is the traffic on
> this list?

20 messages a day or so, I'd guess. You could look at the archives at
mail.gnome.org/archives to see for sure.

Havoc