I'd be happy to hear your suggestions for improving the code. I've done lots of assembly programming and firmware development over the years, but rarely on x86, and this project was the first time I've used the GNU assembler. It was a learning experience, and that's part of the reason I decided to share it.
I actually wrote parts of this library in C at first, but ported them down to assembler once I got them working, because it felt more elegant to divide my project cleanly into a 'runtime' library written in assembler and a 'kernel' program written in C. A matter of taste, I suppose. The use of assembly doesn't really create a maintenance burden as the target architecture isn't changing and the library already does everything it needs to.
I actually wrote parts of this library in C at first, but ported them down to assembler once I got them working, because it felt more elegant to divide my project cleanly into a 'runtime' library written in assembler and a 'kernel' program written in C. A matter of taste, I suppose. The use of assembly doesn't really create a maintenance burden as the target architecture isn't changing and the library already does everything it needs to.