About This Guide

For an overview of the changes to the software and docs, see What's new in Photon 1.14 (as of August 16, 2000)

This Installation & Configuration guide accompanies your Photon Runtime software and is intended both for system administrators and Photon programmers. This guide contains installation instructions, configuration options, and man pages for all the utility programs and applications distributed with Photon Runtime 1.14.

The following table may help you find information quickly:

When you want to:	Go to this chapter:
Establish the initial Photon environment	Basic Installation
Register your service plan and software for technical support	"
Influence how Photon starts up	Configuring Photon
Change default graphics or input services	"
Work with Photon in a language other than English	Unicode Multilingual Support
Set up and configure your printers	Printing Support
Select and configure fonts	Font Support
Install Photon in an embedded system	Photon in Embedded Systems
Review utility program options and arguments	Applications and Utilities
Select startup options for Photon applications	"
Isolate and resolve installation/configuration problems	Troubleshooting
Run Photon on a small screen	Small-Screen Demo
Look up Photon terms	Glossary

What's new in Photon 1.14 (as of August 16, 2000)

Font support - the latin.pfr file now contains the Euro symbol.
New Photon applications and utilities include:
- kbsel - Switch keyboard mappings
- phgrafx - Choose display preferences for your workstation
- ptermcs - Create character set files for pterm
Printer drivers can optionally call the auxrender library rendering functions.
New options have been added to the following printer drivers:
- Pp.bmp
- Pp.canon
- Pp.escp2
- Pp.pcl
- Pp.ps
New options have been added to the following utilities:
- crttrap - added the -r option
- helpviewer - added new attributes for the <table> and <body> elements.
- pterm - you can now load a character set file from pterm's Configuration dialog (see the Text Font area section).
The Photon Display Configuration dialog has been revised. See Starting Photon in the Basic Installation chapter.
The following chip sets are supported (see crttrap):
- ATI Rage128 chips
- MagicMedia256AV, MagicGraph128XD, MagicGraph128ZV+ chips
- nVidia Riva TNT, nVidia Riva TNT2 chips
- Rendition V2x00 chips
- ST Microelectronics STPC multimedia processor chips
- 3DFX Voodoo Banshee, 3DFX Voodoo3 Banshee
New graphics drivers supported:
- Pg.Banshee
- Pg.Banshee90
- Pg.neomagic
- Pg.Rendition
- Pg.rage128
- Pg.STPC, Pg.STPCdc
- Pg.tnt
Deprecated graphics drivers:
- Pg.PM6422, Pg.PM6422dc
  Manufacturer out of business. Target chipset no longer available.
- Pg.mono
  Photon supports 8 bit color or higher. Pg.vga4 is a safe mode driver for sixteen color operation. Lower bit depths available on a custom basis.
- Pg.Tseng, Pg.Tsengdc
  Chipset no longer available.
- Pg.ragedc, Pg.ragedc24
  Functionality provided by these drivers is now included in Pg.Rage.
- Pg.tvg9685
  This driver only worked on one particular implementation of the 9685 chipset.
- Pg.wd
  Chipset no longer available. Company no longer makes any graphics chipsets.
- Pg.xga
  No longer manufactured.
If you require any of these deprecated drivers for existing installations, please contact your sales rep.

QSSL strongly recommends against using older chipsets in new designs.
Deprecated trapper modules
- virge.trap - merged with s3bios.trap

Corrections

In the Sample QNX 4 boot program example of the Photon in Embedded Systems chapter, the qnx_spawn_options global variable was used incorrectly with the qnx_spawn() function.

Incorrect:
      qnx_spawn_options.flags = _SPAWN_NOZOMBIE;
      pid = qnx_spawn(0, NULL, 0, -1, -1, 0,
                      cmds[0], cmds, arge, NULL, -1);

Correct:
      pid = qnx_spawn(0, NULL, 0, -1, -1, _SPAWN_NOZOMBIE,
                      cmds[0], cmds, arge, NULL, -1);

The directory for the modeswitcher programs has been corrected. See crttrap.
In phgrafx, removed references to the height and width options.
In pv, corrected the path for default.pal.
In pwm, removed references to the s option; corrected the name of the user configuration file (~/.photon/pwm.cfg).
In snapshot, corrected the examples section.

QNX Community Resources

About This Guide

What's new in Photon 1.14 (as of August 16, 2000)

Corrections