Rework the compositor so it stops repainting the whole screen every frame,
tripling the frame rate (17 -> 54 FPS at HD) and adding smooth animation.
- Scene-dirty skipping (gui/gui_desktop.c): the full scene is recomposited only
when something other than the bare pointer changed -- input, an open animation,
or a ~10 Hz heartbeat for live content (clock, graphs). Idle and pointer-only
frames skip the recomposite entirely.
- Cursor save-under (gui/gui_cursor.c): the pointer is an overlay that stashes
and restores the pixels beneath it, so moving the mouse never forces a full
repaint -- pointer motion runs at the frame cap.
- 60 FPS frame pacer: each iteration is timed against the monotonic clock and
padded to a 16.666 ms budget with the new ktime_delay_us() (HPET-precise
busy-wait), giving consistent pacing instead of a free-running spin.
- Window open animation (gui/gui_wm.c): new windows grow from 60% to full size
with a cubic ease-out over ~160 ms; gui_wm_update() drives it and reports
while any window is still animating so the compositor keeps redrawing.
- Default display mode set to 1280x720 (HD) -- the sweet spot where the
software compositor sustains a near-60 FPS cursor with headroom for effects.
Kernel: kernel/time/ktime.c gains ktime_delay_us(), a precise HPET-based delay
(bounded PIT fallback) used by the pacer.
Verified live (screenshotted): boots to 1280x720, logs in, tray reads ~54 FPS
(green) while the pointer moves, no cursor ghosting, windows render cleanly.
Clean build on x86_64/aarch64/armv8i; 0 panics / 0 OOM.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Fh5z6V7nGPbHvqVG5p4CXX
GUI polish / HD:
- Default display mode raised to 1920x1080 (video=1920x1080); make run/vnc use
vgamem_mb=64 and -m 512M. The growable heap absorbs the larger backbuffer,
shadow and wallpaper (observed: one 16 MB growth to a 48 MB heap).
- Wallpaper: three-stop vertical gradient, a soft concentric-frame edge vignette
for depth, a finer faint grid, and a centred brand mark.
- Window chrome: brighter/saturated titlebar gradient when focused, an accent
underline on the active window, and larger/softer drop shadows.
- Default session windows are placed and sized for the HD work area.
- Live FPS pill in the taskbar tray (green/amber/red by rate); tray widened so
FPS + CPU trace + memory badge + clock no longer overlap.
Kernel:
- kernel/time/ktime.c + include/kernel/ktime.h (new): a unified monotonic
high-resolution clock that prefers the HPET (nanosecond) and falls back to the
100 Hz PIT tick. Wired ktime_init() into boot; drives the compositor's FPS
sampling. New `ktime` LazyBox applet reports the source and uptime.
Verified live (screenshotted): boots to 1920x1080, KTIME reports
"source: HPET, nanosecond resolution", the polished desktop renders with the
active-window accent and vignette, and the tray shows a live FPS reading.
Clean build on x86_64/aarch64/armv8i; 0 panics / 0 OOM.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Fh5z6V7nGPbHvqVG5p4CXX
Turns the desktop from a fixed set of hand-drawn panels into a real
environment applications can be written against.
SUB-WT immediate-mode toolkit (gui/gui_widgets.c):
Buttons, labels, checkboxes, radios, sliders, list boxes, text fields, tab
bars, scrollbars, progress bars, sparklines and badges. An app feeds the WM
event into the toolkit and then calls widgets from its paint routine, so
each call both draws the control and reports what the user did with it --
no retained widget tree to keep in sync with window state.
Icons and dialogs:
gui_icons.c holds 14 16x16 palette-indexed glyphs stored as hex text, so the
art stays hand-editable and picks up theme changes for free; they scale by
integer factors and can be drawn as tint stencils. gui_dialog.c adds modal
info/warning/error/confirm dialogs that dim the desktop, take exclusive
input, word-wrap on spaces and report results through a callback.
Applications (gui/gui_apps_ext.c):
Settings (tabbed appearance/input/power), Task Manager (live process table
over task_find_by_pid with memory and heap gauges), Kernel Log viewer (reads
the dmesg ring, strips ANSI, colours by severity, scrolls), KTest Runner
(drives the in-kernel suites and reports 21/21 with timing), Clock & Calendar
(Zeller's congruence month grid) and a Text Editor.
Window manager (gui/gui_wm.c):
Minimize/maximize/restore buttons, a corner resize grip, edge snapping, tile
and cascade layouts, F5-F9 shortcuts, title truncation, and index-based
enumeration so the taskbar no longer assumes window ids stay dense.
Desktop shell (gui/gui_desktop.c):
Launcher icon grid, richer start menu, right-click context menu, taskbar
buttons that minimize and restore, and a live CPU trace in the tray.
Two interaction bugs fixed along the way:
- keyboard_get_key() blocks until a key arrives, so calling it every frame
froze the compositor; it is now gated on keyboard_has_key(), and stale
console input is drained before the first frame.
- When the desktop consumed a click, the WM's press-edge detector kept the
pre-press state and read the still-held button as a fresh press on the
next frame, stealing focus from whatever the click had just opened.
gui_wm_sync_button_state() keeps the two layers in step.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01L5yKJT4Wo2cV3rfPrwY5MP
- Upgrade resolution to 800x600 @ 32bpp TrueColor with Bochs/QEMU VBE LFB
- Implement full 8042 Aux PS/2 mouse controller driver on IRQ 12 (vector 44) with packet decode and bounds clamping
- Add high-definition 8x16 font rasterizer with text drop shadows for sharp typography
- Upgrade to smooth 16x24 anti-aliased cursor with dark slate outline and drop shadow
- Increase titlebars to 24px and taskbar to 32px with modern desktop styling
- Re-architect applications (SysMon, Terminal, Explorer, Calc, Paint, About) for spacious high-res display
- Create separate feature branch 'feat/gui-desktop'
- Implement double-buffered 2D graphics engine with alpha blending, gradients, rounded rects, and font rasterization in gui/gui_gfx.c and include/gui/gui_gfx.h
- Implement alpha-blended mouse pointer overlay in gui/gui_cursor.c and include/gui/gui_cursor.h
- Implement SUB-WM Window Manager with draggable titlebars, close/minimize buttons, drop shadows, and event routing in gui/gui_wm.c and include/gui/gui_wm.h
- Implement Cyberpunk/Nord desktop environment with wallpaper, taskbar, start menu popup, and system tray in gui/gui_desktop.c and include/gui/gui_desktop.h
- Implement built-in GUI apps: System Performance Monitor, GUI Terminal Emulator, File Explorer, Calculator, Paint Studio, and About dialog in gui/gui_apps.c and include/gui/gui_apps.h
- Add 'startx', 'gui', and 'desktop' applets in LazyBox suite
- Verified multi-architecture compilation across x86_64, AArch64, and ARMv8i
