README

EGUI - A simple Graphical User Interface system under Linux
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EGUI utilizes the Linux framebuffer mechanism to display windows and other
widgets in text terminals.

The APIs of server and client side are not clear now, some client operations
may need to call server functions, and vise versa.

Alpha channel is supported for framebuffers that have an alpha field of
positive length (typically 8 bits). On some other devices the color may be
incorrect, like on Raspberry PI. On Ubuntu 13.04 with AMD graphical card the
default framebuffer has 32-bit pixels, but alpha channel has zero length, so
transparency is disabled.

As for the future plan, first we need to extend the widgets to at least 20
kinds. And as we bypass X to draw on framebuffer directly, we also need to get
to know all different kinds of framebuffers and how the bits are arranged on
them. Maybe it's a good idea to read some X source code.

According to the idea of the director, our final goal is to implement an IDE
in text terminal. That's actually a long way to go, as the current maintainers
can't work on this regularly after graduation.

It might be interesting and exciting to discover all kinds of framebuffers,
but it might also be frastrating, as this is only reinventing-the-wheel after
X. It's possible that a group leader in the future will find it necessary to
turn to X APIs.


This project is directed under the Red Ant Laboratory, School of Software,
Dalian University of Technology. It was started by Jin Silan in 2009.

I sincerely hope that this README could be updated every year by a new group
leader.

Stone Kang <stonekyx@gmail.com>
Jul. 2013