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RE: VESA calls under WinNT
- To: "Federico Bianchi" <bianchi at pc-arte2 dot arte dot unipi dot it>, "Matt Lewandowsky" <mattl at d2k dot com>
- Subject: RE: VESA calls under WinNT
- From: "Suhaib Siddiqi" <ssiddiqi at inspirepharm dot com>
- Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 07:37:50 -0400
- Cc: "Cygwin-Xfree at Sourceware dot Cygnus dot Com" <cygwin-xfree at sourceware dot cygnus dot com>
Thanks for message. I am forwarding it to Cygwin-Xfree list because
it might be of interest to others.
If you think NT_xlib from rxvt can be extended to cover X-servers,
would you mind working on it?
As far as my knowledge of X11/MOTIF is concerned, it may require a
major re-write of XFree86 code. most of the Xfree86 code is
aseembeler language, therefore very tricky to port to non-Unix
platforms.
A couple of users are looking into devices drivers and vXD issues
for xfree86.
As far as DirectX is concerend, John Fortin is working on it. He
told me a few weeks ago that it was also not as easy as we thought
in the begining.
Regards
Suhaib
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Federico Bianchi [mailto:bianchi@pc-arte2.arte.unipi.it]
> Sent: Friday, October 29, 1999 7:49 AM
> To: Matt Lewandowsky
> Cc: Suhaib Siddiqi
> Subject: VESA calls under WinNT
>
>
>
> Hello.
>
> - I have tested the VESA calls (INT 10h, AX=006Ah,
> AX=4F00h and AX=4F01h)
> under the Windows NT 4.0SP5 and Windows 2000 VDM
> environments. They
> don't work. Period. Apart from the DPMS thing (maybe, I
> have not tried
> it myself), everything but the GDI/DirectX/Win32k.sys
> can only access a
> plain old VGA, unless the system itself is augmented
> with some helper
> driver. Quite disappointing - you really made me hope
> there was a chance
> to avoid that sort of vulnerability even in a direct port.
> - I am carefully looking at (read: studying) the DirectX
> 3 specs; only the
> DirectDraw and DirectInput would be actually needed,
> which would let us
> avoid all the pains with the other components. COM is
> not beautiful, but
> I must admit it has a sound rationale behind it, after
> all - and either
> DirectDraw or DirectInput are not that terrible when
> you come from a
> non-GUI background. Then, I'll have to parse thoroughly
> the DGA specs,
> which I have only cursorily glanced at so far.
> - the alternative might be enhancing the XLib over GDI32
> code, as used in
> the CygWin port of rxvt, to encompass all the functionality of a
> standard XLib. It is my understanding that, at least
> once upon a time,
> the other X11 components (Xt and all the widget libraries) were
> implemented directly in terms of XLib, without too many
> assumptions
> about the environment they run on; after all,
> DECwindows ran on VMS
> before Windows 3.0 were available. A certain
> performance boost might be
> gained if using the INT 2Eh SVCs from Win32k.sys
> instead of their Win32
> GDI32.DLL counterparts; this might be selected at
> initialization time,
> looking for the service table. Emanuele Aliberti sent
> me the URL of an
> article which comes of help here.
>
> Best regards to you all
>
> Federico Bianchi
> Dipartimento di Storia delle Arti
> Universita` degli Studi di Pisa
> p.zza S.Matteo in Soarta, 2 - 56127
> Pisa (Italy)
> tel. +39-050-587111 (cent.),
> +39-050-587224 (uff.)
> fax. +39-050-580128; e-mail:
> <f.bianchi@arte.unipi.it>
>
> ===================================================
> !DISCLAIMER!: my e-mail reflects
> _my_own_ opinions!
>
> ===================================================
>