UI considerations with gfxboot

[daniele favara]

On 12/20/05, daniele favara <danjele at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/20/05, daniele favara <danjele at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/20/05, Colin Watson <cjwatson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > > 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:
>

finally i got it ... here some notes that maybe could help:

* i was using gfxboot from SUSE 9.3 and it seems those files can't be
used with the new version, i needed to compile my theme again and i'll
need to fix all the *.inc files to get same colors i was using, F1,2,3
keys actions and so on.

It's possible to choose between install or boot, infact from SUSE
makefile 2 differents cpio files are generated:

- bootlogo (install)
- message (boot)

those files contains the dir tree of themes/install/ and themes/boot,
that means that bootlogo has a really big size (all helps and jpg
images), i can't figure out if it's really usable .... isolinux can't
load that file.
message is smaller, it has just the en help and back.jpg image.

Ubuntu choosed to include within the cpio file:
- init
- languages

if not using the cpio file is the size really important ? i mean if
the pcx image is not within the cpio why not to use a jpg ?  the same
png image could be used to generate the usplash.c and the back.jpg ...
with the same resolution.

anyway:

-r--r--r--  1 root root 20336  splash.pcx (640x480 )
-r--r--r--  1 root root 26706  back.jpg (the one i'm using) (800x600)

* dapper isolinux.cfg has this string:

GFXBOOT bootlogo (the cpio file)

i was using

GFXBOOT init

and it works even ...

i don't know if using GFXBOOT <cpio file> will be possible to use file
that are not within it for help messages for ex ... i couldn't get it,
and a bootlogo file that will include all of them it will be really to
big in size. But probably i'm wrong.

* theme_colors.inc

it would be nice to merge here all the colors definitions, it should
be easier then to customize a theme and maybe it could even be
possible to have for ex:

- theme_colors_ubuntu.inc
- theme_colors_kubuntu.inc
......
and use differents *.config files:

ubuntu.config
kubuntu.config
.....

in this way the main struct will be the same, but i was even reading
you would use different menus for each distro ... so it seems not
really useful my idea if not for me :P.

* tricks

it seems this gfxboot code it's full of tricks i can't understand ,
when i compiled the SUSE theme and tried it out with qemu, sometimes i
get that xmas theme and sometimes not

I can't then figure out why the greeting.jpg is not loaded with this
gfxboot, i was using it on the one i was compling from the modified
SUSE 9.3 sources, but here it seems i can't get it working.

it would be nice to compile the ubuntu theme even, but i couldn't ...
maybe i made something wrong, i'll play more with it or i'll wait for
upgrades.

ciao

DF