why is it called /boot/beastie.4th ?

[Oliver Fromme]

Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
 > Oliver Fromme <olli at lurza.secnetix.de> writes:
 > > I don't think it can be done currently, but it would be possible to
 > > implement.  I haven't looked at the syscons code in a long time,
 > > though.  Right now my focus is on the loader.
 > 
 > If you say the magic words (something like "I'm willing to work on
 > syscons once I'm done with the loader"), I'll have your application in
 > core@'s inbox in a New York minute :)

I'm afraid I can't make any promises because I have a real
job and other duties.  I can certainly have a look at the
syscons code.  But it depends on the amount of my free time
what I can do.

It also depends on the current state of the code.  Actually
I was quite familiar with the syscons code in 4-current
about 10 years ago (see PR kern/15436, for example).
However, I think the code has undergone some significant
changes in the meantime.

So I can say that I'm willing to look at the syscons code,
but right now I can't promise to actually do any useful
work.  :-)

 > > In fact my PCX decoder supports that; runs crossing planes (standard)
 > > as well as runs crossing scan line boundaries (non-standard).  In fact
 > > I have to admit that it currently doesn't support padding at all.
 > > Well, ppmtopcx never generates any padding, so I didn't care.  I'll
 > > try to fix that, though.
 > 
 > Hmm, the spec calls for padding each scan line to the nearest multiple
 > of 16 bits IIRC, but it's been a long time.

The spec is a little vague in several places.  I think it
says that padding is allowed but not required.  Certainly
the ppmtopcx tool never generates any padding:

$ ppmmake black 1 1 | ppmtopcx | wc -c
     129

That's 128 bytes for the header and 1 byte for the actual
bitmap.  Gimp is the same, it doesn't generate padding,
but it's not able to create 16 color PCX files; it always
creates files with a 256 color palette or truecolor, so
you have to cycle the file through pcxtoppm|ppmtopcx if
you want to use the image in a 16 color mode.

The smallest PCX file gimp can produce is 898 bytes:
128 for the header, 1 byte for the bitmap, 1 marker byte
(0x0c) for the extended palette, and 768 bytes for the
256-color palette (256 * 3 bytes RGB).

Best regards
   Oliver

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(On the statement print "42 monkeys" + "1 snake":)  By the way,
both perl and Python get this wrong.  Perl gives 43 and Python
gives "42 monkeys1 snake", when the answer is clearly "41 monkeys
and 1 fat snake".        -- Jim Fulton