Question about programming graphics
Murray Taylor
MTaylor at bytecraft.com.au
Fri Nov 18 02:36:12 GMT 2005
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-small at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-small at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Dan Charrois
> Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 8:22 AM
> To: freebsd-small at freebsd.org
> Subject: Question about programming graphics
>
> Hi there. I'm not sure if this is the appropriate FreeBSD mailing
> list to use - if not, please let me know where this question
> would be
> more appropriate.
>
> I'm in the early conceptualization stages of developing avionics for
> amateur-built aircraft, and would like to use FreeBSD as the core OS
> to develop on, likely using a couple of small single board computers
> cross-checking their results for redundancy. It would be using a
> flash-based filesystem for ruggedness.
>
> In any case, I need to be able to output graphics to an LCD display,
> but for efficiency reasons would like to avoid XWindows (all the
> overhead of providing moveable windows, pointing devices, etc. is
> useless since the configuration of the various display elements on
> the screen would be fixed. I suppose that the user would be able to
> choose between various display configurations, but they wouldn't be
> using a regular user interface in the true sense of the word. Have
> you ever tried to drag a mouse around, or even use a touchscreen, in
> heavy turbulence? :-)
>
> Since the avionics would consist of both the hardware and
> software as
> a bundle, I don't have to worry too much about thousands of
> different
> possible configurations.
>
> In any case, what options do I have? I'll be programming in regular
> C (not C++, though I could if I absolutely had to). Ideally, I'd
> like to know if there is a library or something that would let me
> initialize the display to a given resolution and then just
> use simple
> functions to draw lines, circles, etc., in different colors. An
> OpenGL implementation without requiring XWindows might be cool too,
> if it would let me render three dimensional objects at fixed
> positions on the screen.
>
> I've done a lot of command line programming in FreeBSD, but
> so far no
> graphics programming, in XWindows or otherwise, so I may be missing
> something basic here. It just seems like a full-blown XWindows
> implementation is completely overkill for my purposes and I'm
> looking
> for something simple to use and set up. Or is there an XWindows
> "lite" configuration that lets you output simple graphics to the
> screen in fixed places without the user interface component?
>
> If anyone can point me in the right direction (or really, any
> direction for that matter) it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
>
> Dan
> --
> Syzygy Research & Technology
> Box 83, Legal, AB T0G 1L0 Canada
> Phone: 780-961-2213
> _______________________________________________
>
Dan,
It seems that you basically want a "window like" cursor addressable
display system
ncurses is the bees-knees for this as it supports pretty much all
of your needs and is a linkable library to your C / C++ programs.
And it is part of the baseline install -- try
% apropos curses
and you will get all the man pages you kneed ;-)
BTW freebsd-questions would also be a place for a general question like
this
also. ( I ahev copied this to there also for you to seen any other
comments arise ;-)
mjt
--
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
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Murray Taylor
Bytecraft Systems
P: +61 3 8710 2555
F: +61 3 8710 2599
D: +61 3 9238 4275
E: mtaylor at bytecraft.com.au
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