First of all, thanks for all the ppl who replied to my status inquiry about
GGI.
And yes, I'm interested in joining the development. Very much so :-).
First question though,
has any of the developers any Silicon motion - based cards? (SMI-drivers in
X). If so, please contact. I'm interested in developing a proper driver for
these chips (Lynx*-series). There is currently only the X-driver, which is
pre-alpha-quality (very very weak) and contains a busload of bugs.
I understand that I'd need to sign an NDA to get the programming specs for
these chips, with which I'm ok, but how strong sentiment is there against
NDAs in the GGI-dev community? I don't want to make any 'binary-only'
drivers, because they suck (for the lack of a better word) as we all know. I
still have to get the specs though, and to inquire whether SMI is ok with
this thing (source-drivers).
But to the subject, as I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), DirectFB
already contains some functionality which mirrors some of GGIs abilities?
So, if/when I'd write some application that needs direct and hw-accelerated
access to the gfx-system (it will be the only application running on that
card, however my application involves multiple cards in one system) which
API should I use? I think that directfb also uses the fbdev-interface, so in
connection to the previous question, would I be best off if I wrote a
fbdev-driver for the SMI? And what is KGI anyway? ;-). I mean that many
years ago ;-) I did some work with GGI and then the KGI contained drivers
for different hardware. Is it parallel to the current fbdev-drivers or
something else completely?
Sorry for the newbieness-questions, but I have long ago acknowledged, that I
do not know anything :-).
Aleksandr Koltsoff
Design Manager
Engineering Office Bertel Ekegren Ltd
+358 9 613 03228 (tel), +358 9 613 03200 (fax)
