Google SoC, Fancy Menus or USB keyboard

Google SoC, Fancy Menus or USB keyboard

[Colin D Bennett]

I am interested in possibly contributing to the GRUB project in the 
Google Summer of Code, and I was interested in further discussing the 
Fancy Menus idea.

I have not used GRUB 2 yet (I am using Gentoo Linux primarily, with GRUB 
0.9x), though I have downloaded and browsed the source code. I assume 
that fancy menus will still use the keyboard exclusively as the input 
device, for the time being. (Is there talk of mouse support?)

Does GRUB code run in real mode? I was thinking that double-buffering 
the graphics might be important for fancy graphics effects, and wondered 
whether is it difficult to allocate and deal with a megabyte or so block 
of memory? When I last programmed real mode programs in DOS, I know the 
limitations based on segment sizes, etc., but it's been a while.

Thanks!
Best Regards,
Colin

Re: Google SoC, Fancy Menus or USB keyboard

[Pavel Roskin]

On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 17:43 -0700, Colin D Bennett wrote:

> Does GRUB code run in real mode? I was thinking that double-buffering 
> the graphics might be important for fancy graphics effects, and wondered 
> whether is it difficult to allocate and deal with a megabyte or so block 
> of memory? When I last programmed real mode programs in DOS, I know the 
> limitations based on segment sizes, etc., but it's been a while.

GRUB runs in protected mode, but it can switch to the real mode
temporarily to call BIOS.  In any case, I believe that the menu
implementation should be portable rather than x86 PC specific.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin

Re: Google SoC, Fancy Menus or USB keyboard

[Colin D Bennett]

Pavel Roskin wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 17:43 -0700, Colin D Bennett wrote:
>
>   
>> Does GRUB code run in real mode? I was thinking that double-buffering 
>> the graphics might be important for fancy graphics effects, and wondered 
>> whether is it difficult to allocate and deal with a megabyte or so block 
>> of memory? When I last programmed real mode programs in DOS, I know the 
>> limitations based on segment sizes, etc., but it's been a while.
>>     
>
> GRUB runs in protected mode, but it can switch to the real mode
> temporarily to call BIOS.  In any case, I believe that the menu
> implementation should be portable rather than x86 PC specific.
>   
Thanks for the info. Of course I also agree that the menu should be 
portable; my mention of real mode was, I guess, a question of whether we 
have a 32-bit linear address space, rather than specifics about the 
processor mode.

Re: Google SoC, Fancy Menus or USB keyboard

[Pavel Roskin]

On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 18:54 -0700, Colin D Bennett wrote:

> Thanks for the info. Of course I also agree that the menu should be 
> portable; my mention of real mode was, I guess, a question of whether we 
> have a 32-bit linear address space, rather than specifics about the 
> processor mode.

I was debugging the code to switch to the protected mode lately, so I
can assure you that the address space is linear :)

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin

Re: Google SoC, Fancy Menus or USB keyboard

[Colin D Bennett]

Pavel Roskin wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 18:54 -0700, Colin D Bennett wrote:
>   
> I was debugging the code to switch to the protected mode lately, so I
> can assure you that the address space is linear :)
>   
Is there anyone in particular on the GRUB project that I should be in 
contact with about the fancy menus task before submitting my SoC 
application?

Thanks,
Colin

Re: Google SoC, Fancy Menus or USB keyboard

[Vesa Jääskeläinen]

Colin D Bennett wrote:
> Pavel Roskin wrote:
>> On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 18:54 -0700, Colin D Bennett wrote:
>>   I was debugging the code to switch to the protected mode lately, so I
>> can assure you that the address space is linear :)
>>   
> Is there anyone in particular on the GRUB project that I should be in 
> contact with about the fancy menus task before submitting my SoC 
> application?

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