[Etherboot-developers] Re: [Etherboot-users] Request for Comments

[<ke...@us...>]

>a/ Graphical boot logos

I would very like to see this but by means of loading a menu program
which does all the fancy things rather than the way it's done now by
encoding the menu in the DHCP reply packet, which is becoming rather
packed with features. I started some work on this but didn't take it
beyond proof of concept, see mknbi-menu. My intention was next to take
an interpreter like LUA (www.lua.org) to allow people to write menus as
LUA scripts. LILO has some nice stuff you might be able to borrow from.
Unfortunately I have only square tuits at the moment, no round ones (bad
pun).

If you pull this off, you will not need some of the additional features
you proposed to introduce in your previous posting.

>b/ Localized Etherboot version (text output in german, for example)

I understand the motivation for this. However my policy is that the
output text in the source stays in English. The reason is the same as
for the Linux kernel. To be able to report problems with the software,
diagnostic output must be readable by developers. This means, like it or
not, English. However I have no objections to (or any intention of
stopping) localisation patches. You are welcome to use the patch area at
the web site to post such patches. Perhaps you should register as a
developer.

Again, a user controllable graphics and menu capability might make this
issue unimportant. Booting is normally so fast that before you know it,
the kernel messages have appeared. If you could boot a menu, then before
you know it, you have a graphics screen, and you just see the Probing,
etc messages flash past.