Customizable text menu appearance/themeable text interface

Customizable text menu appearance/themeable text interface

[Colin D Bennett]

User pelle.k on the Ubuntu forums had an interesting (and to me, appealing) 
idea to provide customization of the GRUB text menu appearance to make it 
cleaner and more elegant (obviously this may vary with personal taste).  I 
have seen other questions on the GRUB list here about removing or changing 
certain text on the GRUB text menu as well.

Even when the graphical menu is polished and working perfectly, the text menu 
is still highly desirable in a number of situations.  Some users will still 
prefer it.

Read the post and see pelle.k's mocked-up screen shots at:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7444286&postcount=24

On 2009-06-12 around 07:00, pelle.k wrote on the Ubuntu forums:
>I dont know to what extent grub2 is supposed to be able to theme, but i
> really (really, really, really) hope there will be some way to remove
>
>    * borders
>    * Version info text at the top
>    * Help text at the bottom
>
>It looks really messy as it is now (grub legacy), and i don't really need
> any fancy graphics, or animations (although that could be nice) - just the
> ability to have grub not point me in the eyes so much by default. Look at
> an white/black standard grub (don't even get me started at the
> white/black/blue one... hehe), and a mockup i made. Simplicity is much more
> pleasing to the eyes, me thinks (the second, and third one). With a
> splashimage, it looks even better, where the borders on the "standard grub"
> would spoil it a bit.

I wonder if anyone is interested in working on something to provide text menu 
customization?

Regards,
Colin

Re: Customizable text menu appearance/themeable text interface

[Pavel Roskin]

On Fri, 2009-06-12 at 09:45 -0700, Colin D Bennett wrote:
> User pelle.k on the Ubuntu forums had an interesting (and to me, appealing) 
> idea to provide customization of the GRUB text menu appearance to make it 
> cleaner and more elegant (obviously this may vary with personal taste).  I 
> have seen other questions on the GRUB list here about removing or changing 
> certain text on the GRUB text menu as well.
> 
> Even when the graphical menu is polished and working perfectly, the text menu 
> is still highly desirable in a number of situations.  Some users will still 
> prefer it.

Yes, it looks nice.  Also, on some terminals (serial, open firmware) the
borders cannot be drawn, at least in a nice and reliable way.

The help text could be reduced to "Press 'h' for help", and pressing 'h'
would lead to a more detailed help page.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin

Re: Customizable text menu appearance/themeable text interface

[Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 8:19 PM, Pavel Roskin<proski@gnu.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-06-12 at 09:45 -0700, Colin D Bennett wrote:
>> User pelle.k on the Ubuntu forums had an interesting (and to me, appealing)
>> idea to provide customization of the GRUB text menu appearance to make it
>> cleaner and more elegant (obviously this may vary with personal taste).  I
>> have seen other questions on the GRUB list here about removing or changing
>> certain text on the GRUB text menu as well.
>>
>> Even when the graphical menu is polished and working perfectly, the text menu
>> is still highly desirable in a number of situations.  Some users will still
>> prefer it.
>
> Yes, it looks nice.  Also, on some terminals (serial, open firmware) the
> borders cannot be drawn, at least in a nice and reliable way.
I think it's a good idea too. Grub can acquire an interface completely
loadable from a file.
The format of theme description fileis to be discussed. One possiblity
would be a plain ascii screen dump with special markers to indicate
where to put menu. This format has however the problem of depending on
resolution and not working nice if resolution changes. Can you propose
an easy-to-use and resolution-independent format? Also grub2 must stay
usable even if no theme file is present on the system
>
> The help text could be reduced to "Press 'h' for help", and pressing 'h'
> would lead to a more detailed help page.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Pavel Roskin
>
>
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>



-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko