[BRLTTY] BRLTTY under real Dos

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Wed, 3 May 2006, Samuel Thibault wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> One problem that arise is that brltty is quite big... Configuring
> it with
> 
> CFLAGS=-Os ./configure --disable-i18n --disable-iconv --disable-api --disable-usb-support --disable-bluetooth-support --without-x --without-gui-toolkit --without-libbraille --with-braille-driver=all,-tt,-vr  --without-curses  --without-flite --with-speech-driver=all  --with-screen-driver=-all  --enable-standalone-programs --disable-pcm-support --disable-midi-support --disable-fm-support  --disable-preferences-menu --disable-table-selection --disable-learn-mode --disable-contracted-braille --disable-beeper-support --disable-pm-configfile
> 
> and a strip results to
> 
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 samy samy 774K 2006-05-03 17:34 brltty
> 
> which can't even fit into DOS memory (640Ko)...

I hope no one sane is ever to consider trying to port BRLTTY to the x86 
16-bit real mode.

Therefore with a protected mode (32-bit) version you can store it in 
upper memory above the 640KB mark.

Then if you link against uclibc you might have a much different figure 
than when linking against glibc.  I once had a BRLTTY binary with the 
Alva driver built-in that weighted about 40KB that way.  But that was a 
while ago.

And even then it might simply not be practical.  Better run your DOS 
applications under dosemu and use standard BRLTTY.


Nicolas