Framebuffer Documentation...

Question

Is there any documentation on how to write software that uses the framebuffer device in Linux? I've seen a couple simple examples that basically say: "open it, mmap it, write pixels to mapped area." But no comprehensive documentation on how to use the different IOCTLS for it anything. I've seen references to "panning" and other capabilities but "googling it" gives way too many hits of useless information.

Edit: Is the only documentation from a programming standpoint, not a "User's howto configure your system to use the fb," documentation the code?

Answer 1

The source to any splash screen (i.e. during booting) should give you a good start.

Answer 2

You could have a look at fbi's source code, an image viewer which uses the linux framebuffer. You can get it here : http://linux.bytesex.org/fbida/

Answer 3

Look at source code of any of: fbxat,fbida, fbterm, fbtv, directFB library, libxineliboutput-fbe, ppmtofb, xserver-fbdev all are debian packages apps. Just apt-get source from debian libraries. there are many others...

hint: search for framebuffer in package description using your favorite package manager.

ok, even if reading the code is sometimes called "Guru documentation" it can be a bit too much to actually do it.