Not much of a gain in terms of usability (a bit of a loss in fact, things are
a bit slow and glitchy), but it's a necessary move if we want to use upcoming
grid-enabled userspace apps, such as a visual text editor.
That's my mega-commit you've all been waiting for.
The code for the shell share more routines with userspace apps than with kernel
units, because, well, its behavior is that of a userspace app, not a device
driver.
This created a weird situation with libraries and jump tables. Some routine
belonging to the `kernel/` directory felt weird there.
And then comes `apps/basic`, which will likely share even more code with the
shell. I was seeing myself creating huge jump tables to reuse code from the
shell. It didn't feel right.
Moreover, we'll probably want basic-like apps to optionnally replace the shell.
So here I am with this huge change in the project structure. I didn't test all
recipes on hardware yet, I will do later. I might have broken some...
But now, the structure feels better and the line between what belongs to
`kernel` and what belongs to `apps` feels clearer.
Most of register fiddling routines (which is now the only thing contained
in care.asm) are used by almost all userspace apps, often in inner loops.
That makes the penalty of using jump tables for those a bit too high.
Moreover, it burdens jump tables needlessly.
Because this unit is very small (now that string routines are out), it makes
sense to always include it in binaries.
Previously, on real hardware (emulator behaved fine), we would routinely
get repeat keys unless pressing the button very fast. This commit solves that.
This was mostly lifted from my "tihello" example, but it required significant
adjustments.
This commit also introduces a font management system. A lot of fonts are
available online, but sources aren't always clear so to avoid copyright
landmines, I re-created my first 5x7 font from scratch.
As it is now, this resulting ROM gets "Collapse OS>" to be displayed on the
LCD screen. Much work still left to do.
ref #41
We use zasm's ability to use labels in .equ directive.
We didn't do it before because for a while, we were in between scas
and zasm (scas was used in automated tests) so we needed to use the
lowest common denominator: zasm doesn't have macros and scas can't
use labels in .equ directives.
This forced us to add this layer of indirection. But now that we are
completely cut from scas' dependency, we can use this nice zasm's
ability.
ref #64.
Also, fix a bug in the shell where it would write outside the buffer's
bounds when given a completely filled buffer without a space character
in it.
The goal is to avoid mixing those routines with "character devices"
(acia, vpd, kbd) which aren't block devices and have routines that
have different expectations.
This is a first step to fixing #64.
