LIBIEEE1284(3)

💖 LIBIEEE1284 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because today we're talking about libieee1284 — that's the IEEE1284 communications library, section 3 of the manual, and it's giving "parallel port but make it elegant." 💅

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✨ NAME ✨

libieee1284 — the IEEE1284 communications library. that's it, that's the name, she's simple and she knows what she is 🎀

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <ieee1284.h>
cc files... -lieee1284

so you include the header, you link against the library, and you're off. iconic. 🦋

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👑 OVERVIEW 👑

okay so the whole vibe here: libieee1284 is a library for accessing parallel port devices. yes, parallel ports. they're vintage, they're camp, we love them. 💜

The model it presents to you is fairly abstract — think of it like a list of parallel ports with arbitrary names, plus a bunch of functions to access them in various ways, ranging from little bit operations all the way up to block data transfer in one of the IEEE 1284 sanctioned protocols. glow up from bits to blocks, fr fr. ✨

Now, the library lives in user space, and you might be like "bestie isn't that slow??" but no — the speed penalty may not be as bad as you initially think, because the operating system may well provide assistance with block data transfer operations. in fact, the operating system may even use hardware assistance to get the job done. so yes, using libieee1284, ECP transfers using DMA are possible. we love a delegation moment. 👑

The normal sequence of events will be that the application:

1. calls ieee1284_find_ports to get a list of available ports
2. then ieee1284_get_deviceid to look for a device on each port that it is interested in
3. and then ieee1284_open to open each port it finds a device it can control on.
4. The list of ports returned from ieee1284_find_ports can now be disposed of using ieee1284_free_ports.
5. Then when it wants to control the device, it will call ieee1284_claim to prevent other drivers from using the port
6. then perhaps do some data transfers
7. and then ieee1284_release when it is finished that that particular command. This claim-control-release sequence will be repeated each time it wants to tell the device to do something.
8. Finally when the application is finished with the device it will call ieee1284_close.

note bestie: usually a port needs to be claimed before it can be used. this is to prevent multiple drivers from trampling on each other if they both want to use the same port. nobody wants a driver turf war. 😭

The exception to this rule is the collection of IEEE 1284 Device IDs, which has an implicit open-claim-release-close sequence. the reason for this? it may be possible to collect a Device ID from the operating system, without bothering the device with it. so the OS just hands it over, no drama, no knocking on the device's door. 🫶

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🎀 CONFIGURATION 🎀

When ieee1284_find_ports is first called, the library will look for a configuration file: /etc/ieee1284.conf. 🍓

Here's the grammar tea:

• Comments begin with a '#' character and extend to the end of the line.
• Everything else is freely-formatted tokens.
• A non-quoted (or double-quoted) backslash character '\' preserves the literal value of the next character.
• Single and double quotes may be used for preserving white-space.
• Braces and equals signs are recognised as tokens, unless quoted or escaped.

The only configuration instruction that is currently recognised is “disallow method ppdev”, for preventing the use of the Linux ppdev driver. that's the whole menu, bestie. one item. minimalist. 🌈

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🧚 ENVIRONMENT 🧚

You can enable debugging output from the library by setting the environment variable LIBIEEE1284_DEBUG to any value. literally any value. put yes, put 1, put slay, the library does not care, it just wants to see you try. 💀

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🌟 FILES 🌟

• /etc/ieee1284.conf — Configuration file.

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

parport(3), parport_list(3), ieee1284_find_ports(3), ieee1284_free_ports(3), ieee1284_get_deviceid(3), ieee1284_open(3), ieee1284_close(3), ieee1284_claim(3), ieee1284_release(3), ieee1284_data(3), ieee1284_status(3), ieee1284_control(3), ieee1284_negotiation(3), ieee1284_ecp_fwd_to_rev(3), ieee1284_transfer(3), ieee1284_get_irq_fd(3), ieee1284_set_timeout(3)

the whole friend group, honestly. go read them all. 📚✨

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>

• Author.

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⭐ COPYRIGHT ⭐

Copyright © 2001-2003 Tim Waugh

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and that's the page bestie!! 🎉 this was page LIBIEEE1284(3), section 3, dated 09/18/2007, and it's serving "Introduction" energy from the LIBIEEE1284(3) manual. go forth and talk to your parallel ports, no cap. 💖🦋🌸