[BRLTTY] terminal emulator screen driver

[Mario Lang]

Hi.

I've wanted to have a small device which could enable any type of braille
display to act as a vt100 terminal since a long time.  That basically is because
I do work in an environment with many different Unix systems, and it
would be helpful if I wouldnt need to separately install brltty on each
of these boxes, rather just use the natual serial terminal capabilities.
Well, this is already possible, if you pack up with a laptop and minicom, but
in reality this setup is pretty much overkill sometimes.  I've wondered
many times why braille displays arent just building vt100 in, it
isnt that hard, but oh well.  Anyway, now that screen drivers are modular,
I had a neat idea:  Wouldn't it be nice to have a "terminal emulator"
screen driver.  The screen driver would open a tty device (serial, pseudo terminal,
whatever) and act as a terminal emulator for inbound traffic.  Some
displays (like the HandyTech star) do already fully work that way, since they
have a working keyboard attached to them.  The input could just be
sent out to the tty device and bingo.
Use cases:
* To replace a linux/minicom/brltty system for accessing a serial terminal
  port just with linux/brltty.
* Ideally, someone will find a suitable ARM board with just USB and
  PS/2 keyboard, and we could build a terminal->braille display adaptor.
* Possibly replace the shm Screen driver for non-Linux Unix
  platforms by offering a second solution.  The system could run
  a getty on a pseudo-terminal, starting brltty with the terminal screen
  driver on that terminal.  That do you think, this shoud work, right?

Any suggestions on that idea?  Anyone willing to join up on the effort?
If you have EE knowhow, suggestion on how to build this as truly small
hardware would be welcome as well.

-- 
CYa,
  Mario