Re: [links] Newbie questions

Mikulas Patocka <[email protected]> Thu, 20 May 2004 15:43:33 +0200 (CEST)
Newsgroups gmane.comp.web.links.list
Message-ID <[email protected]>

On Wed, 19 May 2004, Kevin D.Quitt wrote:

> We're trying to use Links as an embedded browser (i.e., a browser on an embedded
> system).  The idea is that our application will create URLs to send to the
> browser, as there is no direct support for a user (e.g., keyboard or mouse).
> We've managed to do so for the most part, but there are two things we need to be
> able to do.
>
> Most important is to display text over a background image.  We've had no luck at
> all on this, what would seem should be a fairly simple thing.  Using the <BODY
> BACKGROUND="URL">, we can load the background image.  I expected the browser to
> paint from back to front, and we'd just have to replace the code that provides a
> background-color pixel with code that would select the correct pixel from our
> graphic.  We haven't been able to track down how text gets painted; there
> doesn't seem to be just a single place where this happens.  Reading through the
> archive is discouraging and very difficult on this subject, because there are so
> many HTML posts.

Links has no support for that. And it's not easy to add it.

> The other requirement is displaying animated GIFs.  For our application, such
> GIFs must be full-screen (320x240) and non-optimized.  We replaced Links' GIF
> decoder with our own, already-functional, decoder, and we are able to display an
> animated GIF.  The problem is that the browser calls the GIF decoder multiple
> times for each image, so every third image is displayed.

It might happen when the image is viewed in non-rectangular area. You must
read time (with gettime()) and render the frame that should be displayed
in given time.

> We've been running Links under X, primarily because we haven't been able to get
> Links running with SVGAlib.  We have our main application that runs Links under
> itself, and that uses SVGAlib in those conditions where a browser is not
> desired.  We've even figured out how to switch back and forth between X and
> SVGAlib controlling the display.  We would like to use SVGAlib for two reasons:
> it's *much* smaller and fits into cheaper hardware, and because the routines
> that look like they would make fixing our two problems are only found in files
> that interface Links to SVGAlib.
>
> Now, I'm sure Links actually works with SVGAlib, because everybody says so.  Is
> there some special trick to it?

It can just be compiled when it finds vga.h and libvga.a. Then use
links -g -driver svgalib -mode 640x480x256 (or other mode)

> As to the others, can somebody hit me with a clue-by-four?  We're willing to pay
> for code already developed, or time in developing it, or for advice on how we're
> being stupid.
>
> Thanks in advance.

Mikulas
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