Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:27:35 +0000 From: "Dieter BSD" <dieterbsd@engineer.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [RELEASE] New Boot-Loader Menu Message-ID: <20110430192737.287270@gmx.com>
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[ attempt #2 - grumble - sorry about the blank message, hope it works this time - grumble- ] > I hope that works for serial console. VT100 may be a reasonable > default in that case, but it would be good to make sure that menu > works even on a dumb terminal. Perhaps we should put 'key' letter > in brackets then? This needs to work, correctly, everywhere. This needs to be easy to understand by a stressed out user whose machine is having problems. Therefore: Thou shalt not assume graphics. Thou shalt not assume color. Thou shalt not assume VT100 or any specific terminal. Thou shalt not assume ability to display bold. Thou shalt not assume ability to underline text. Thou shalt not assume availability of multiple fonts. Thou shalt not assume more than 24x80 chars. Thou shalt not assume scrollback. Thou shalt not assume fancy cursor movements. Thou shalt not assume presence of function keys. Thou shalt not assume presence of arrow keys. Thou shalt not assume a fast interface. Thou shalt not assume the three-finger-salute works. Putting brackets around letters (and numbers) sounds good. If there is room, perhaps add a message explaining that the user should enter one of the choices in brackets. A help option would be useful, giving a reminder of what things like ACPI and APIC stand for, what "safe" mode does, etc. Would be nice: "uname -v" of the kernel it will boot. Would be nice: a user friendly way to boot from a different disk/partition/kernel. Without the user having to know the mapping between what the firmware calls disks and what FreeBSD calls disks. And without writing anything to disk. Would be nice: a fix for having to lean on a key autorepeating for a couple seconds.
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