Re: [Qemu-devel] GUI for QEmu (ex "VMware Player" topic)

[NyOS <lista@nyos.homelinux.net>]

Hi!

(note: Subject changed since it has noting to do with VMPlayer.)

> if SDL is common to most guest screens: I agree with you
> that the gui/toolkit should overlay the SDL.

In my opinion, introducing new dependencies should be avoided due to  
portability reasons. QEmu already uses SDL, so it's an obvious way to use  
it for the gui also. There are gui-s based on SDL, so the wheel is already  
invented. :) (However, reimplementing a button or an editbox needs few  
work I think.)

I was wondering about a new approach. People can reach the VM screen at  
alt-ctrl-1, the monitor at -2 and so on.. A graphical monitor (a kind of  
GUI) could be introduced e.g. at alt-ctrl-5 or alt-ctrl-0. It could offer  
changing the cd/dvd/floppy image, cont, stop, commit, and so on.
When people run qemu with --help parameter, it could do what it does now  
(print command line options). But executing it without parameters, it  
could open that graphical monitor, where images, memory, hardware would be  
set.

That way no new dependencies would be introduced, the VM could be set full  
screen, and it would be completely be backward compatible. So noone is  
forced to use GUI who doesn't really need it.

Another approach is GTK. I think people sould not fear it. Gimp and Gaim  
also use GTK, and runs on Win32. They ship a gtk installer with the  
windows binary (there's also a version without gtk), so people can install  
it on windows with the well known next-next-finish way. If you don't  
believe me, try it.

Best regards,

Miklos GYOZO

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