virtual frame buffer with larger resolution

[Pasha]

Hello I have a netbook that has a resolution too small to allow me to see the okay box on most long settings menus. I was wondering if there was a way to build a fake framebuffer device that reroutes to the real framebuffer device, but scales the image so that the X server thinks the screen has a larger resolution than it does, but everything still fits on the screen. I am aware of the virtual portion on the X configuration script, but I don't want to have the viewport movable. I want the effect to be the same as if i was looking at the screen like a movie that was constantly being scaled down to fit the screen size. This is done in players like mplayer on the fly, so it should be possible to impliment. Therefore any information about how framebuffers work internally, pointers to good video scaling algorithms like those used in mplayer, or general tips on a better way to do this would be welcome. Thank you very much.

[Pasha]

can anyone at least point me to some good information about accessing a framebuffer from C++ or as a stream.

[Pasha]

OK, so I have now found out how to write to the framebuffer, and have constructed a rudimentary program to scale from a file to the screen, however, how can i make that file act as a framebuffer so that ioctl will return my new resolution on that file.

[Pasha]

Do I need to make it a kernel module in order to have ioctl return values as if it were a real framebuffer. If so, how would I go about doing this. I have never tried to write a kernel module before. As always any help is apreciated. Thanks in advance