Re: New console toy

[Adam Hoka <adam.hoka%gmail.com@localhost>]

On 12/27/2011 7:59 PM, Michael wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> some of you probably noticed a bunch of commits in rasops, wscons etc. 
> regarding support for anti-aliased fonts in the console. There are three 
> drivers which support this so far:
> - genfb, if it finds a 32bit framebuffer
> - ffb
> - voyagerfb with options VOYAGERFB_ANTIALIAS
> To test this on your hardware you need to:
> 1. add an anti-aliased font to your kernel config:
>    * options FONT_DEJAVU_SANS_MONO12x22 # Helvetica-ish font
>    * options FONT_DROID_SANS_MONO12x22 # Google's Droid font
>    * options FONT_FREEMONO12x22 # Times lookalike
>    They were all generated from TrueType fonts found in pkgsrc, I'll commit 
> the converter
>    at some point, it's kinda rough right now.
>    Leave at least one bitmap font in as a fallback for drivers that don't 
> support alpha
>    fonts, for now that's still the majority.
> 2. with genfb, make sure it finds a 32bit framebuffer ( on x86 pick an 
> appropriate VESA
>    mode ), with voyagerfb add options VOYAGERFB_ANTIALIAS, with ffb do nothing
> 3. rebuild your kernel, boot it, stare at a console that looks an order of 
> magnitude 
>    better ;)
> 
> So far ffb is the only driver which does all the alpha blending work by 
> hardware, in genfb it's all software and voyagerfb is halfway between - the 
> hardware doesn't support alpha blending but we can still use the blitter to 
> draw characters ( and thus avoid having to access framebuffer memory directly 
> which would require syncing the drawing engine )
> All the new fonts use ISO encoding, support for auto-generated box drawing 
> characters has been added.
> 
> have fun
> Michael


sounds awesome! i will definitely try this tomorrow