Drawing graphics on terminal

[Eric Jacobs]

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 20:15:06 +0200
Nakal <nakal at web.de> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> recently, I found vidcontrol and played a bit with it. I have been 
> looking for documents about how to output pixels (graphics) on the 
> terminal.

See /usr/share/examples/libvgl

> I could not find any. Before I give up, I want to ask here, 
> if it is possible to do that. What I want to do is to port my 
> applications from Linux-framebuffer to FreeBSD, but I am also thinking 
> about making a graphical installer for FreeBSD (eye-candy is always 
> nice to attract new users).

I've been thinking about that too. The big question I have is whether
it's a good idea to use a toolkit with a more restrictive license
(GPL, LGPL, MPL), which would make it a lot easier, or come up with
something that could be licensed under the BSD license. I know that
FreeBSD has used the GPL'd libdialog in sysinstall for quite some
time without problems, but maybe it is time to start thinking about
something that is free in the BSD license sense.

I don't think the advantage of a GUI-based installer would be
"eye-candy". libdialog looks fine IMO. It would be to increase the
ease of use, allow more flexibility in installations, and add more
troubleshooting/diagnostic options (disabling/enabling/loading
device drivers, etc.)