Hardware Talk :: Help making a digital pic frame

I'm planning on one. First I'd get an old laptop, at minimum with hd, active tft screen, ethernet, and usb. I like old Toshibas, so maybe a Satellite or a Libretto..

I had nothing to do today, so I planned it quite thoroughly..
I've used LinuxFromScratch before, it'll make a good base when optimized, stripped and modded. Pic viewer would be Zgv on svgalib. Mplayer, tinyX and Opera would also be there. The sys would be on one ext2 readonly partition, the rest of the space would be for pic's, mp3's and movies, maybe on fat32 'cause permissions wouldn't be needed.

Since Linux still scares many, I'd do a kind textmode UI, with lots of help msgs.

To the questions:

Locale support takes space. I'd modify the app's default messages to what I want. I don't know C at all (only programmed in (visual/Q) basic, java and javascript), but I think I'd be looking for some printf lines. But in which files? (.c or .h?)
And if there are many, main.(c/h) or some other?

Then I'm going to take away the keyboard, but leave the touchpad for control. How do I map mouse events (left, right, wheel up, wheel down) to keys in console?

Does Linux handle ext2/3 any faster than fat32?

And if you have any other suggestions, I'd like to hear 'em..

some thoughts:
- Stick with ext*. It's made for linux and fat* is deprecated IMO.
- Ever think of using Feh? It seems to be the favourite for DSL digital picture frames, but I think it requires X (or you could just have it launch X when required)
- For console use of the mouse, you might want to take a look at gpm.
- For locale support, you'll also have to install the many fonts out there... unless you have certain target(s).

I was going to remove locale support, and all traces of it, and just modify the default messages to my liking...

It will not be based on DSL, and zgv doesn't need Imlib2 or X..

I've now found a program for binding keyboard & mouse events to commands in console: keybjar.
Maybe then it can be used for making mouse buttons do keyboard events with maybe "echo keycode=38 > /dev/event0" or something...

Just to report my findings. It seems that there existed a program that does Exactly what I want, but it was for SCO unixware, no free source, not even a binary available on the net.... Grr!!!

Here's the man page for it....

original here.