oFBis

oFBis, which used to be named libfb, is a library containing a few simple graphical routines for the Linux framebuffers. It is comparable to the svgalib found on Linux/i386. It was at first not a part of the OSIS project, in the sense that is doesn't have anything to do with TOS or GEM emulation besides providing the graphical routines used by oVDIsis.

oFBis was first made by Martin Mitchell, martin@debian.org, in Linux/m68k and supported the Atari and Amiga graphical types. It has now been extended and supports 8-bit static pseudocolour mode (chunky) and 16-bit truecolour, and works on Linux/PPC and Linux/i386 using framebuffers. It might work on other machines as well, but it hasn't been tested yet.

It is intended to be fast and easy to both use and support, with respect of adding support for other graphical types and machines. This doesn't mean it is always fast, optimisation of routines are made now and then.

This library can of course be used without the rest of the OSIS packages as well. For example, we have made an image viewer that uses the ImageMagick library, called fbview. Another project using oFBis is Zen, a multi-interfaced web browser.

Releases of oFBis can be found at ftp://ftp.nocrew.org/pub/osis/ofbis/. The development version can also be taken from our CVS server. We also have binary releases for i386, sparc and powerpc at ftp://ftp.nocrew.org/pub/osis/ofbis/binary/. These may not always be the latest version. We suggest using the CVS version. It's usually stable.

There is a mailing list dedicated for the development and use of the oFBis library. Previously, discussion of it, was done on the nocrew-osis list, but since it's also used as a library outside of the OSIS project, we have made a separate mailing list for it, called nocrew-ofbis@nocrew.org. If you want to subscribe to the list, please follow the instructions on the mailing list page. If you want to discuss oFBis in connection with the OSIS project, this is best done on the nocrew-osis list. However, if you are not interested in the OSIS project, but only in the oFBis library, or programs that use it, nocrew-ofbis is the list for you.