New Boot Loader Menu

[Devin Teske]

On Oct 7, 2012, at 12:52 PM, Garrett Cooper wrote:



> 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.
> 
> ...

> - 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.
> 

Adding screen real-estate won't help. Menus (and any of the maximum 65535 submenus) are always limited to 9 maximum menu items.

A significant overhaul of the Forth code would be required to accommodate more than 9 menu items per-menu.

Currently, if a 10th menuitem were rendered (assuming I lifted the boundary-checks), it would be rendered as such:

…
8. Eighth Item
9. Ninth Item
1. Tenth item
…

Worse, you press "8" to invoke the 8th item, "9" to invoke the 9th item, but ":" to invoke the 10th item (wait, what?)

Yes, ":" to invoke the 10th item. Because currently ASCII keycodes are used to associate menu items. The next character after "9" is ":".



> 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.
> 

Sorry, but I'm the infrastructure guy. I provide the framework. I'll leave it to the community to decide how to use that framework. I'm leaving it in jpaetzel's, avg's, and mav's very capable hands to utilize my framework in whatever way they see fit.

They came to me with a need. I filled that need. If the community doesn't want it, I'll just dump it into DruidBSD and use it there until someone wants it.
-- 
DevinDe

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