New Boot Loader Menu

[Devin Teske]

On Oct 9, 2012, at 11:18 AM, John Baldwin wrote:

> On Tuesday, October 09, 2012 11:25:19 am Devin Teske wrote:
>> …Re-adding the list… (good point)
>> 
>> On Oct 9, 2012, at 8:15 AM, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>> 
>>> On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 8:05 AM, Devin Teske <devin.teske at fisglobal.com> wrote:
>>>> …Re-adding the list…
>>>> 
>>>> On Oct 8, 2012, at 12:42 PM, olli hauer wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> ...
>>>>> 
>>>>>> You'll also get zero argument out of me that putting "Delete" on-screen 
> is not only to-be-avoided for the opposing situation (that some keyboards may 
> not have a "Delete" but instead "Backspace") but indeed "Delete" is worse 
> because the implied connotation associated with the "Delete" key (_someone_ 
> might be confused into thinking "Delete" will purge the menu from memory).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I will play with keycodes.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Just be aware that currently left arrow CANNOT work. That is a bad 
> suggestion (read why below).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> In Forth, I'm using the "key" primitive which -- rather unfortunately 
> -- produces a zero for "left-arrow", "right-arrow", "up-arrow", "down-arrow", 
> "F1", "F2", "F3", "F4", "F5", "F6", "F7", "F8", "F9", and "F10" (note: it 
> doesn't catch "F11", "F12", "F13", "F14", "F15", or "F16").
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> So all those key options are right-out when it comes to "using them 
> instead of Backspace" (I simply can't identify in the loader when those keys 
> are pressed).
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> ...
>>>>> 
>>>>> will the space key work for a general back to or up one entry?
>>>>> I suspect the space bar has the same keycode on all platforms 
> (intel/appel/ppc/sparc ...)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Anyway nice work :)
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> By golly, I think olli is on to something here!
>>>> 
>>>> What does everybody think about space?
>>>> 
>>>> I like it because it's a NICE BIG TARGET (and it's not used by anything else).
>>> 
>>> It was used once upon a time to pause the bootloader countdown…
>> 
>> Well… that hasn't *really* been true since r222417 (16+ months ago).
> 
> Yes, you completely destroyed POLA for users used to hitting various keys
> to catch the boot loader before it passed by over remote KVMs.

Wait, what?

I did no such thing.

If you had users mashing random keys during the menu, the old functionality was to keep the timer rolling while they mashed away.

After r222417, you could still mash away… except the timer stopped.

I believe in this instance, I improved an already questionable situation. Questionable because "why were they mashing?" -- the likely answer being "they wanted to either wake things up or they wanted to access the menu" -- in which case I think the old functionality of continuing the timer until ONLY space was it is never what was desired.

Is there really a drove of like-minded individuals that _want_ the timer to keep rolling when someone is mashing keys?

ASIDE: Let's ignore the obvious that even in FreeBSD-6, mashing keys could have led to unknown results as hitting 's' would lead to immediate single-user boot.



>  Please don't
> keep moving the goal posts.

Alexander Leidinger recently proposed moving "Single User" back to being an action item (opposed to being a stateful boolean menuitem). This would return the functionality of "press s to boot SUM" (versus "press s then Enter to boot SUM" which changed in r222417).

It sounds like you might be a proponent of this.



>  The only reason my co-workers aren't screaming 
> loudly about this to date is that we still use 8.x.

Well, I advocate them to voice their opinions (tho shouting isn't advocated).


>  Users get these key 
> bindings ingrained and we shouldn't change them lightly.
> 

See previous discussion. What key binding did they memorize that I broke?



> That is really my only comment for this thread.  It seems you are intent on
> breaking POLA for little to no gain and have no compunction about doing so
> which is a shame.
> 

Absolutely no comment.
-- 
Devin

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