[BL] Printing scanned files

sindi keesan keesan at sdf.lonestar.org
Thu Mar 24 15:08:10 EST 2005


On Thu, 24 Mar 2005, David Moberg wrote:

>>> Also, any printer-specific ones that you request.
>> pbmto  epson   escp2  lj lps ppa (in your first package already)
>
> Noted. Do you have any other printers? Or should I build a tarball now
> with those and the printer-agnostic ones?

Does anyone else on the list have other printers they want supported?
You could post a list of files in netpbm and let people choose.

I don't even have a ps printer (or a real epson or working laser at 
present) but this should be for everyone's benefit.

Other people could also help choose which editors looked useful for 
rotating, cropping, merging, reducing, scaling, etc.

>
>>> 8-bit color for Xvesa is PseudoColor.  AFAIK the
>>> PseudoColor routine for our version of Xvesa was
>>> non-functional.
>>
>> The Delilinux Xvesa has the same problems, in BL2.  Is there a
>> later version of Xvesa to try?
>
> Probably. I'm still trying to figure out if mine works, as I don't
> remember any trouble at 8-bit with Xvesa.
Let us know.

>> Re framebuffer, we have one Matrox Millenium II card that is VESA
>> 2.0 and supposedly framebuffer (a more recent sort of XVESA that
>> supports up to 1600 resolution).  You would need to make a few
>> changes to the kernel to support it and it looks rather
>> complicated.  In addition to 'kernel patches' for S3 Trio64 or
>> Virge, there was mention of using UNIVBE in DOS (like UNIVESA) to
>> upgrade the VESA capabilities of a card before loading linux with
>> loadlin.   Maybe you would like to try this out and provide a
>> frame-buffer kernel for 'vesafb'.  Matrox will not work with that,
>> needs 'matroxfb' (compiled into the kernel?  Or maybe could be
>> modules?).
>
> What?? I thought that you just said it was VESA 2.0. Anything which
> supports that will work with vesafb.

It is VESA 2.0 but the instructions said to use matroxfb not vesafb.
It might work with vesa but not as well?


>> The Matrox cards are the only ones on a list other than MDA that
>> could be used as the video card in a dual-head system.   With two
>> fb devices, you could use con2fb and specify during boot which
>> consoles were used with which video chip and monitor, as well as
>> setting the resolution by mode number (vga=0301).  There is an
>> XF68_FBdev X server which supposedly does better than the SVGA one
>> (more resolution?).  XF86Config also needed.
>
> Xfbdev (the other FB server) uses the KDrive architecture instead, like
> Xvesa. It's a little smaller than Xvesa, and doesn't need command-line
> arguments for most setups.

What is Kdrive?  I got totally confused trying to figure out framebuffer 
and Xvesa and Kdrive.  Will Kdrive work on VESA 1.2? I gave up on fb a 
while back but I had the BL2 kernel (not supportive of fd) and had no idea 
what I was doing.  Maybe you can get some framebuffer setup working with 
BL including kernel patch for S3, and share it.   Beyond my abilities.

>> The board that won't do resizecons properly with Virge works with
>> Trio64 and Trident and Matrox as expected.  In a dual-monitor
>> system the MDA consoles are usable (with cursor) only in 80x25
>> mode, but you can switch modes to what you want for a while, then
>> back to 80x25 to use the second monitor.  I fiddled a bit with BIOS
>> video shadowing which did not help (it may have made things worse
>> to disable it).
>
> I believe that's where some (all?) of your video memory is superimposed
> on main memory. Not quite sure, though.

MDA memory and VGA text memory don't normally use the same main memory. 
VGA graphics overlaps MDA.  Normally two VGA cards could not coexist. 
Matrox coexists with MDA and supposedly also with regular VGA cards.  It 
must be using some third area of memory which is messing up DOS pictview 
and the scan part of vga=ask.  Maybe you could set something to make it 
work better but I don't know how.

>
>> fbset can be used to enable framebuffer console scrollback
>> buffering, which normal vga has by default and mda does not have at
>> all.  (Shift PageUp or Shift PageDown).

>> The FB console has it by default, too.

Maybe I was reading about some older version which did not?  You were 
supposed to use video=vesa:ypan or ywrap.

>> VESA 2.0 cards on a list did not include my Tseng which claims VESA
>> 2.0 but did have PCI cards from ATI, SiS, STB, Riva, Genoa and
>> Hercules.  Are all AGP cards VESA 2.0?
>
> Probably it's in the spec. AGP came out a while after VESA 2.0.


I will try this on my computer with the AGP Trio 3D some year if you can 
put together a user-friendly setup for BL2 or BL3.

We had three other AGP cards which would not work with Xvesa.  STB 
Velocity I think (on the PCI 2.0 list).  Colors badly messed up.

And there is an ATI AGP card in one computer.  Does not seem to be mach64.



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