genfb(4) vs. screen types and font changes/uses (was: NetBSD vs. VirtualBox)

At Sun, 23 Aug 2026 21:32:38 -0000 (UTC), [email protected] (Michael van Elst) wrote:
Subject: Re: NetBSD vs. VirtualBox
>
> [email protected] ("Greg A. Woods") writes:
>
> >So given that genfb(4) and other raster display drivers rely on
> >rasops(9) to "fill in the gaps" left by not having hardware to do
> >character manipulations, wouldn't it make sense for rasops(9) to also
> >support some or all or more than all of the basic "screen types"
> >provided by the likes of vga(4)?  Those were widely used by some of us!
>
> You cannot just use the "widely used screen types" on arbitrary displays,
> and where that is possible, you need a scalable font engine in the kernel.

There's no need to find/scale/load an exact fitting font that will
precisely fill the screen for a given emulator "size"/type.

Just use the best-fitting font that is currently loaded and centre the
resulting "window" on the screen!  Macs do this with their EFI boot
loader, Sun did this with their text console screens, etc., etc.

What I really hate currently is how the font size changes when the
genfb(4) driver attaches.  That's horrific looking and a bad UX!  It
should continue to use the same font as the bootloader was using, and
that the kernel used up until that point.

> For your specific problem, you could use a different boot.cfg when
> booting with UEFI. The EFI bootloader will load the file from
> ESP:/efi/netbsd/boot.cfg when present, instead of loading it from
> the root partition.

Thanks, I did not know that!

--
					Greg A. Woods <[email protected]>

Kelowna, BC     +1 250 762-7675           RoboHack <[email protected]>
Planix, Inc. <[email protected]>     Avoncote Farms <[email protected]>

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