Graphics support for /boot/loader
"You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression"
Look at the current text menu of FreeBSD's bootloader, look at the
old-fashioned ASCII logo. FreeBSD aims to support
the most modern hardware platforms, to implement the latest protocols
and greatest algorithms. Do you think it's appropriate that FreeBSD
greets its users with a boot screen that looks like a 20 years old
DOS program?
That's why I'm working this:
Lets start with a screenshot (this e is not completely up-to-date,
current WIP looks a bit different):
The project consists of the following parts (in bottom-up order):
- Graphics functions that access the actual hardware and/or machine firmware (BIOS, EFI, whatever).
- A switch structure that calls the appropriate functions depending the platform.
- FICL glue that binds the graphics functions to Forth words.
- Forth code that uses the new words to construct a graphical menu.
- A collection of themes.
Every theme has its own subdirectory
/boot/themes/
<name> which contains at least
a configuration file, and possibly other files as well. Example:
/boot/themes/default/biglogo.pcx
/boot/themes/default/default.font
/boot/themes/default/theme.conf
And the configuration file (
/boot/themes/default/theme.conf) looks like this:
theme_background="/boot/themes/default/biglogo.pcx"
theme_font="/boot/themes/default/default.font"
theme_bgcolor="0 0 0" # black
theme_fgcolor="255 255 255" # white
theme_options_xy="64 10"
theme_actions_xy="64 82"
A theme is enabled by adding a line to
/boot/loader.conf:
beastie_theme="/boot/themes/default/theme.conf"
New themes can easily be created. It is expected that the base system
will ship ly with a limited number of themes (maybe just e), and
more themes can be provided through the ports collection.
If a theme wants to do more sophisticated things, such as using
multiple graphics files or fonts, or re-arrange the menu in completely
different ways, it will have to bring its own Forth code and modify
beastie.4th directly (an appropriate mechanism to provide hooks into
may be provided at a later time).
Work in progress
Note this is currently work in progress, happening in the FreeBSD Perforce ("p4")
repository. I plan to commit it to FreeBSD when it's ready, after proper review
and approval.
For those you are eager to check out the WIP, there's a tarball available for
preliminary testing. Please see the
testing instructions
for details. Note this is "bleeding edge", so it might not work for you.
Current status:
|
Item
|
Lang
|
Status
|
|
low-level graphics functions
|
C
|
done for i386/amd64 (BIOS-based, VGA, 4bpp)
|
|
platform switch
|
C
|
in progress
|
|
FICL Forth words
|
C
|
done
|
|
"beastie" menu graphics support
|
Forth
|
done
|
|
text/binary converter for fonts
|
awk
|
done (a version written in C also exists)
|
|
initial default theme
|
-
|
done (background p_w_picpath, font)
|
|
multiple themes support
|
Forth
|
in progress
|
|
documentation
|
-
|
in progress
|