OS/X11 support for XO-1 hardware?

[Jordan Crouse]

david at lang.hm wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Feb 2009, Chris Marshall wrote:
> 
>> With the spin-off of Sugar development to sugarlabs,
>> it is nice to see the development continued.
>>
>> However, it seems that the OLPC layoffs and refocus
>> has scuttled the work to complete some OS and system
>> software support for the XO-1 hardware features.
>>
>> For example, I have been waiting for the video scaler
>> support to allow for adjustable display resolutions on
>> the XO.  Among other things, it would allow programs
>> that don't understand a 1200x900 but only 6x4" display
>> to work at a more usable resolution where the graphic
>> elements and text/fonts are consistent and visible to
>> the naked eye...
> 
> programs that don't allow you to scale ther text/fonts are broken on 
> _many_ systems, not just the XO. many distros let you install a 'large 
> font' set (look at debxo 0.4 vs debxo 0.5 for an example of this, with 0.5 
> they moved to a large font set)
> 
>>  It would allow for much improved
>> video performance since you could play back a 320x240
>> video on the full screen at considerable CPU savings.
> 
> except that you would spend those CPU savings doing the scaling up from 
> 320x240 to the higher resolution.

Actually not, the scaling is handled by the hardware, so it doesn't cost 
the CPU anything.  Unfortunately for the original poster, the video 
overlay won't scale with the rest of the graphics, and so the original 
premise is flawed.  That said, fortunately for the original poster, Xv 
has its very own flavor of scaling, so you _can_ play back a 320x240 
video at 1200x900 today with no additional CPU cost if that is your goal 
even with the older driver in the OLPC distribution.

Jordan