New Boot Loader Menu

[Doug Barton]

On 10/06/2012 16:48, Devin Teske wrote:

> NOTE: This change is not trivial. It took me nearly a month of
> hacking to produce this _and_ almost 1,000 changed lines of code are
> required.

It's generally a good idea to ask for feedback before spending this
amount of time on something. Coming to the community and saying, "I
spent so much time on this, you have to accept it" doesn't fly.

	"But that's not why I mentioned how many hours I spent."
	"So why mention it at all?" :)

> Features such as submenus, dynamic menus and menu items,
> and more were added and I'm at a point where I can commit this back
> to the tree. I'm sure we want these features, but we have a choice of
> keeping the menu as-is without any changes _or_ we can choose to use
> the new features (as exhibited in this proposal -- where the boot
> options are sidled-off into a submenu).

Others have already brought up their favorite items to keep at the top
level, I think it would be much simpler to leave everything that is at
the top level now, and make submenus option number 8. Bonus points if
you can make it easy to add a submenu via loader.conf.

Regarding the UI on your submenu example; never, ever, ever use
Backspace to mean anything other than "delete the character behind the
cursor." Unfortunately you cannot use 'B' or Escape here either since
they have meaning in the previous menu. 'Left Arrow' is likely the best
choice, although Home or even 'Page Up' would be better than Backspace.

hth,

Doug

-- 

    I am only one, but I am one.  I cannot do everything, but I can do
    something.  And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what
    I can do.
			-- Edward Everett Hale, (1822 - 1909)