Replacement for wind.o

[David B. Thomas]

dwex at cbnewsj.att.com (david.e.wexelblat) writes:

>I am planning to put together a small replacement for wind.o for 3B1
>systems that have pitched UA/wind.o.

I think you would do better to concentrate on building the features you want
into mgr.  For one thing, mgr writes directly to the video RAM, so if you
were running a clock program (say) then a separate screen blanker wouldn't
help.  The next time something is drawn to the screen, it shows up.

I'm currently working on some extensive mgr hacks.  Here's the status so far:

1. I already have it start up from init when the system is booted and stay
running until shutdown.  When you want to log in, you just draw yourself a
window and get a login prompt.  Once you're in, a quickie utility (which I
have yet to write) could make you as many extra windows running shells as
you want.  Nifty, eh?

2. The next step is to implement screen blanking.  It's not too hard...roughly:

	select (with timeout)
	if (select returned due to kb or mouse) {
		time (&lasthit);
		if (isblanked)
			unblank();
	} else {
		time (&now);
		if (!isblanked && now - lasthit > blanktime) {
			isblanked = 1;
			blank();
		}

The only tricky part is that the rest of the code needs to respect the blanked
status, and only write changes to the memory images of the windows, and not
to the screen.  But I'll get it!

3. My new job has me writing bit blit routines in assembly languages all day
long.  What's one more?  I'm going to code all of mgr's bitblits in 68010
assembler and get this baby cookin'.

					little david
-- 
Unix is not your mother.