- From: peter AT adpm.de (Peter Marschall)
- Subject: [Lcdproc] Why aren't the drivers being made?
- Date: Fri May 5 17:14:01 2006
Hi Ethan,
On Friday, 5. May 2006 06:04, Ethan Dicks wrote:
>
On 5/5/06, Peter Marschall
>
<peter AT adpm.de>
>
wrote:
>
> Hi Jason,
>
>
>
> I am the current maintainer and I formally converted the MtxOrb driver
>
> from the LCDproc 0.4 API to the 0.5 API.
>
> Not owning the hardware and without the help of a maintainer this was the
>
> only alternative to completely dropping MtxOrb support in LCDproc 0.5.
>
>
Ah... this might explain the differences _I_ am seeing with my Matrix
>
Orbital VKD204-25 (4x20 VFD w/keyboard interface) between 0.4.x and 0.5..
>
>
Specifically... under 0.4.x, the top line used fully-filled-in blocks
>
around the title. Under 0.5.0, I see pound signs ("#"). Also, BigNum
>
support seems not to work - 'lcdproc K' gives me a blank screen, not big
>
numbers.
>
>
My hardware doesn't have a backlight, or I'd test it and fix it myself. As
>
for "owning the hardware", Peter, do you happen to have a
>
serial-interfaced PalmPilot
>
like a Palm III or Palm V? In the absense of a real Matrix Orbital
>
display, you might try PalmOrb. No guarantees that it's 100% bug-for-bug
>
compatible, but I would think it'd be a good place to start (I do have a
>
PalmPilot, but it's at home,
>
12,000 miles from where I am).
Please do not understand me wrong, but I do not really want to code all
drivers myself. It does not give me "satisfaction" to write drivers just for
its own sake.
I own 3 different types of LCDs for which I keep the drivers updated,
but I do not want to write all drivers myself.
This does not mean that I am totally unwilling to write any driver (the
updates for 0.5 prove that), but after the work necessary to bring 0.5.0 to a
releasable state and to release it (about 3 full weeks of writing code and
documentation that nobody seemed to have cared for in the last two years),
I need a break.
LCDproc is an community driven project where anybody is invited to contribute.
I am only the maintainer of LCDproc i.e. I check in patches for people
without CVS access, cut new relases, help on the ML, ...
>
I am certainly available to assist with hardware verification with at
>
least my VKD204.
>
At some point in the not-to-distant future, I should have some
>
parallel-interfaced
>
44780-based displays wired up, but with this nice VFD in front of me,
>
I find that it's
>
great for writing clients (I have several in Perl here - the newest
>
uses the Katakana
>
character set to rotate through a list of Japanese vocabulary words).
>
>
I was also contemplating as a project, using an Atmel ATtiny2313
>
microcontroller as an LCD serializer for a bog standard 4x20 and perhaps a
>
4x40 LCD display. I _was_ contemplating programming it for the Matrix
>
Orbital command set, but perhaps
>
there is a different serial command set that might make more sense?
>
I'd rather not
>
invent one from scratch - no point in having to create yet _another_
>
driver. Might
>
as well use an existing one.
CU
Peter
PS: I do not know if m,ay words above sound harsh to a native speaker.
They were not meant to do so. If they do they are a result of not being
a native english speaker, with only a limited vocabulary.
--
Peter Marschall
peter AT adpm.de
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