Re: [ppc patch] fix grub_ofconsole_cls on Old World

[Marco Gerards]

Hollis Blanchard <address@hidden> writes:

> Echoing ^L to the console unfortunately doesn't seem to clear the
> screen on my Old World system. This works around that using the "clear
> screen" ANSI code, followed by gotoxy(0,0).
>
> I also needed to correct a bug in grub_ofconsole_gotoxy before that
> would work. ANSI rows/columns are 1-based, so gotoxy(0, 0) should go
> to ANSI row 1 column 1.

Right.  I will apply this.

>       (grub_ofconsole_cls): instead of ^L, use an ANSI escape sequence and
>       grub_gotoxy(0,0) manually.

What I did is correct according to IEEE 1275, IIRC.  I assume you are
using a terminal emulator that connects to your mac using a serial
line.  So in this case we are fixing GRUB to behave like what your
terminal emulator expects, instead of the ANSI subset used by IEEE
1275.  Am I correct?

It would be better to have something like a simple termcap database in
GRUB.  It could be very simple, I think.  If it is not easy to
implement this using simple termcaps, for example when it is not
possible to move the cursor directly and only relatively (I can think
of the possibility such terminal exists) we should work with modules.

In that case you will have a module called `ansi.mod' which has all
the functions required for a terminal.  And a special function should
exist so the termcap plugin can call the putchar function for a
specific driver.

Having such generic system is important I think.  It avoids doing
double work and there are a lot of terminals around.  for example the
ANSI subset IEE1275 uses, VT100 (for serial lines) and I am sure we
will encounter more.

This is on my todo list already.  I will work on this when I will
port the serial driver from GRUB.

Is this idea I have crazy and is there another way to do this?

Thanks,
Marco