Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!tuvie!vmars!hp
From: hp@vmars.tuwien.ac.at (Peter Holzer)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Most requested features in MINIX...
Message-ID: <2306@tuvie.UUCP>
Date: 9 Feb 91 17:00:46 GMT
References: <8930@star.cs.vu.nl> <910205260@uwalt.nl.mugnet.org>
Sender: news@tuvie.UUCP
Lines: 59

waltje@uwalt.nl.mugnet.org (Fred 'The Rebel' van Kempen) writes:

>>>12. Mouse support (helps with windows)
>> Aren't mice just RS232 devices?
>Yes, and I _did_ write a driver for the Microsoft serial mouse/
>Genius GM-6000.  Works OK.  TOgether with my Hercules Bitmap driver,
>it is even useful.
>See below.

Sounds interesting. Are you going to post the mouse driver in the
near future? 


>>>17. A standard debugger on Intel machines. (Boy this would be nice)
>> I actually agree.
>What about "mdb" for the iNTEL?  It exists....

Where? I never read about it. Is it on plains?


>>>20. Long filenames.
>> Never.
>Hurray.  Usually, 14 chars is long enough.  However....

But I want longer filenames. Specifically I am thinking of writing a 
different FS that should coexist with the normal fs, and it will have 
longer filenames. That will require lots of changes :-(

>I have a working mouse driver, but that required hacking in the
>kernel.  It uses the standard RS232-driver to get its bytes, up
>to a complete packet.  Then it looks at the packet data, updates
>its counters, and that's it.  The user can always do a read()
>on /dev/mouse to retrieve the driver's current state.  Easy!

>However, it is EITHER "tty" OR "mouse"..... :-(

>Therefore, I hereby want to ask You All about whether to implement
>the ioctl(fd, TIOCLDISC, ...) system call.  This would enable us
>to use the SAME RS-232 driver for more than one thing, without
>the need for recompiling the kernel.

As I don't have a terminal, just a mouse, I am rather neutral.
However, what does EITHER tty OR mouse mean? Can you have the mouse
on port 1 and a terminal at port 2? If this is not possible, some means
for alowing this is certainly needed. And while we are at invening new
ioctls, how about an ioctl to load different keyboard mappings from the 
console? Sometime in Autumn I posted a german keyboard driver that used 
additional arrays for the German mapping. Now if I think of all the 
different countries in which Minix is sold, that is not the way to go for 
the standard distribution. Having the keymappings preloaded with an american 
keyboard and loading the local keyboard in the /etc/rc is much more elegant.
Adding somethinglike this to my driver would be trivial.

Peter.
--
|    _  | Peter J. Holzer                       | Think of it   |
| |_|_) | Technical University Vienna           | as evolution  |
| | |   | Dept. for Real-Time Systems           | in action!    |
| __/   | hp@vmars.tuwien.ac.at                 |     Tony Rand |