UI considerations with gfxboot

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 10:34:42PM +0100, daniele favara wrote:
> On 12/19/05, Colin Watson <cjwatson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 09:04:56PM +0100, daniele favara wrote:
> > > i see that suse isolinux can load jpg images as background but you use
> > > a syslinux image ... isn't syslinux from dupper patched for that ?
> > 
> > I don't understand you. Can you please elaborate?
> 
> from what i see in last dapper cdrom you don't use a jpg as  background
> image but
> 
>    splash.rle: Syslinux SLL16 image data, 639 x 320

That's only for the old-style display file used in <= breezy.

> or
> 
>   splash.pcx: PCX ver. 3.0 image data bounding box [0, 0] - [639, 479],
> 8-bit colour, 72 x 72 dpi, RLE compressed

Yes, we can use either a JPEG image or a PCX image here. I chose to use
a PCX image because it's only 20KB and I don't see what lossy
compression buys us here.

> and even a splash image (greetings.jpg + splash.jpg) if you use the init
> generated from install and not from boot.

Sure, but our theme is different and doesn't look for those files.
You're welcome to use the SuSE theme if you like, although of course
you'll have to hack it up to deal with booting Ubuntu properly.
Alternatively, change the Ubuntu theme to work with whatever files you
want.

> i'm using SUSE isolinux and i think there is a really nice feature that i
> didn't see in dapper:
> 
> help menu.

The code for this is still there; we just don't have the help files
installed yet, that's all. I'll deal with this eventually.

> when i discovered that dapper was using the patched syslinux i tried to make
> a bootable iso using its isolinux.bin and the old tree i was using:
> 
> 16x16.fnt
> back.jpg
> dots.jpg
> en.hlp
> en.tr
> greeting.jpg
> head_a.jpg
> init
> initramfs.gz
> isolinux.bin
> isolinux.cfg
> it.tr
> lang
> languages
> log
> splash.jpg
> vmlinuz
> 
> 
> but it seems it doesn't work ....

Yes, these file names are mostly handled by the theme code, not
syslinux/gfxboot. I have no interest in attempting to support file name
compatibility with the SuSE theme, but you're welcome to adjust
gfxboot-theme-ubuntu to do whatever you like.

> i'm really interested on having this syslinux on dapper with the same
> features that has the SUSE one ...

Apart from the help menu (which, as I say, I'll add as soon as I manage
to massage the d-i boot screens into the right format; it won't be until
2006 now though), you haven't actually listed any missing features, only
some differing file names. If you want to work with the SuSE theme, do
so. If you want to work with the Ubuntu theme, you'll have to put up
with its different file name expectations.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]