New Boot Loader Menu

[Garrett Cooper]

On Oct 7, 2012, at 12:03 PM, Devin Teske wrote:

> On Oct 7, 2012, at 11:51 AM, Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
> 
>> Devin Teske <devin.teske at fisglobal.com> writes:
>>> Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des at des.no> writes:
>>>> What problem are you trying to solve, exactly?
>>> Many in-fact:
>>> [list of things that bear no relation whatsoever to what was actually
>>> in the email I replied to]
>> 
> 
> I disagree with your slight that those "things … bear no relation whatsoever to what was actually in the e-mail [you] replied to".
> 
> It only *seem* as those are unrelated. I assure you, they are _very_ related (and it's very much my mistake for not making it clear in my initial e-mail). I must apologize for this lack of clarity (I try to rectify it below).
> 
>> Then maybe you should have focused on that in your original email.
>> 
> 
> Yes, perhaps.
> 
> Perhaps it would have been better to explain:
> 
> Hey…
> 
> + iX and I are working on enhancing the boot loader menu to include a new submenu for selecting a Boot Environment (BE). I'm providing the menu infrastructure, iX is providing the C code to populate that menu.

Sounds like GRUB/Plymouth's model... sorta.

> + We can't add this new menu item without pigeon-holing ourselves into a position where no more menuitems can be added.

Understood.

...

> + What do you think of how it looks?


Comments:

- Graphics look ok for a text boot loader. Not too radically different from the original rewrite, which is good.
- Look at other OSes and devices for inspiration for their boot menus: OSX and Windows might not be a good template because the menu is obscured from the end user (or maybe not?), but there might be some Android/Linux platforms out there that can serve as inspiration for things which should be put in a menu. It would probably be best just to come up with a general template based on common use cases. Once you have an idea of the breadth of common uses in a boot menu, I would design from there trying to determine what dimensions are that you need to make things work (I have X items, Y levels deep to work with -- 2 is good, and I can categorize them in this manner, which means I need this many groups max in order to accommodate everything).
- Have you considered high resolution screens/fonts; there are some already in FreeBSD hooked into syscons, but that's available later on at boot? I mention this because there's a lot of wasted real estate on my 30" or 24" LCDs when I boot up FreeBSD.

I'd like to see sketches or a general idea of what you have in mind before investing too much time in a direction that doesn't bear a lot of fruit. I'm sure others here agree.

Thanks!
-Garrett