Re: [patch] x86 penguin logo: some modif. to #4

Riccardo Facchetti (fizban@tin.it)
Wed, 16 Jul 1997 22:05:18 +0200 (MET DST)


On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Gerd Knorr wrote:

>
> In article <Pine.LNX.3.96.970715225306.438B-100000@azuth.tin.it>, you wrote:
> >
> >* Display penguin at the initial boot (no penguin after init execution).
> Hmm, I personaly like to have the penguin displayed for a longer and
> turn it off just before starting a getty...

Yes, but the problem here is:
1) The kernel modify the char table
2) The kernel display penguin and boot messages
3) The kernel should restore char tables and console

The only way to do the (3) just before starting a getty whould be add a
setfont and a reset of the console in an rc file because the init is
execve'd, so we have not any chance to do it after init is running.
Whould you really like to force an user program to restore the screen
after the kernel have done the penguin show ?
I don't like too much this idea because it breaks _all_ the installations:
this way we force _all_ the linux sysadmins to edit an rc file and add a
setfont and a reset ...
... and I think this is a no no.

> >* Show some info about the hardware.
> This probably requires some more #ifdef's if this should work on
> alphas too. The tga.c file has a set_get_font too, so getting the
> penguin on a alpha probably is easy...

Oh yes. I have not considered this idea: my fault :)
btw, is an Alpha charset the same as a PC one (same data structure) ?
If this is true, we can use the same bitmap for PC and Alpha. It then
should be simple to make a penguin.c in the drivers/char and compile it
when x86 (vga) or Alpha (tga) is selected.
Of course, I have checked the tga version of set_get_font and I see that
it is a noop (returns -EINVAL). It is there just as a dummy entry point
and should be implemented before the penguin code can be used for it.

> >Just another word, to the coder of the initial version of this penguin:
> >how about reverse the B/W colors of your penguin ? I think it will be a better
> >penguin :)
>
> [ ... letting the pbm2font program flip the bits ... ]
>
> yes looks better :-)

Heh ... I have mumbled the penguin idea two months ago and I have
prepared a bitmap of the penguin as a starting point to generate the new
chars to add to the charset (of course the same penguin of this bitmap :))
After some tweaking to understand the charmap data structure, I went up
with the reversed penguin and it looked really good :)
After that, I have had no more free time to go ahead with this idea :(

Another thing. How about make the penguin.h a real header file, to be
included as a normal include and not in the middle of a data
structure ? :)

Ciao,
Riccardo.