From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Dec 17 15:47:39 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id PAA27443 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 17 Dec 1997 15:47:39 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from mail.calweb.com (mail.calweb.com [208.131.56.11]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id PAA27384 for ; Wed, 17 Dec 1997 15:47:22 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dlangley@calweb.com) Received: by mail.calweb.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with SMTP id PAA19507 for ; Wed, 17 Dec 1997 15:47:14 -0800 (PST) X-SMTP: helo ip74.dlangley.calweb.com from dlangley@calweb.com server @ip74.dlangley.calweb.com ip 207.173.133.74 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19971217154730.007c6100@pop.calweb.com> X-Sender: dlangley@pop.calweb.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 15:47:30 -0800 To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org From: Doug Langley Subject: A question about virtual consoles Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I am attempting to port some Braille and Speech software to FreeBSD. These packages work by reading text from the current virtual console and piping it to a process wich either translates it to braille, dumps it to a serial port with an external speech synthesizer hooked to it, or converts it to a wave file for output from mbrola. I'm having difficulty accessing the screen and the typed text from the currently active Virtual console, and piping it somewhere else for processing. Is there some way the snoop device can be used for this project? If it helps anyone, the software we are porting is linux- based and relies on the /dev/vcs? and /dev/vcsa? devices. From what I'm given to understand, /dev/vcsa0 contains the text of the currently active virtual console, and /dev/vcs0 contains the complete current console, including scrollback. All of the programs make use of the /dev/vcsa0 device. If anyone can give me some ideas on where to find the text from the local VCS (ttyv0, ttyv1) I would greatly appreciate the help. Please email me privately as well, since I'm not on the list. Thanks!