gfxmenu available in experimental

gfxmenu available in experimental

[Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko]

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Hello, all. After various delays with various cause I'm proud to
announce the availability of Colin's gfxmenu into experimental branch of
grub2.
Experimental branch is a bzr branch available at
http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/grub/branches/experimental/ and of which I
was appointed as developper in charge. It's use is to hold the code
which needs testing or various fixes before being merged in mainstream
but is generally good. Let's hope it will accelerate developpement avoid
the code being put on hold too long and (together with bazaar) enhance
collaboration.
gfxmenu is a project done by Colin D Bennett during Google Summer of
Code 2008 edition for adding GUI menu support for GRUB2. More infos are
available at http://grub.gibibit.com/
Google Summer of Code is an event sponsored and organised by Google with
aim to promote Free Software developpement by paying students for
implementing goals approved by various Free Software projects.
Known issues with gfxmenu:
1) It's slow. At least in qemu. More things are repainted than really needed
2) Menus aren't multi-resolutin adapted. We probably need the ability to
specify coordinates in percents of width/height rather than in pixels
Example menu is available at
http://grub.gibibit.com/files/overlay_2009-07-19.tar.gz . It's not yet
decided whether central repository for themes will be created.
GRUB developpers kindly request you to test experimental branch and
report any bugs. Ideas and patches are of course welcome. But please
retain from comments on what should be our priorities since developers
spend their free time on what they feel is interesting/funny/useful. If
you really want something to be done you have only 3 ways to do it:
1) Do it yourself. Patches are welcome.
2) Hire someone to do it. Many grub2 developpers including myself accept
paid jobs in Free Software.
3) Forbid your kids to do it. New generation of Free Software devs is
welcome

-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko



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Re: gfxmenu available in experimental

[Colin D Bennett]

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On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:17:51 +0100
Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko <phcoder@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello, all. After various delays with various cause I'm proud to
> announce the availability of Colin's gfxmenu into experimental branch
> of grub2.

Thanks for keeping things moving forward even while I have not had time
to do anything on gfxmenu for quite a while.

> Known issues with gfxmenu:
> 1) It's slow. At least in qemu. More things are repainted than really
> needed

Yes, it is slow. Whether or not it was to best decision at the time, I
decided during the Summer of Code that I would keep the painting logic
simple as by always repainting the entire screen whenever anything
changes.  (I wanted to support fancy features like animated
transitions, backgrounds, and widgets, and I knew that double-buffering
would be necessary for this.)

It would perhaps be best to keep track of dirty regions and only repaint
those parts -- however, this gets more complicated when page flipping is
being used as a double-buffering method.


> 2) Menus aren't multi-resolutin adapted. We probably need the
> ability to specify coordinates in percents of width/height rather
> than in pixels

Yes, this has been on my to-do list for a while as well.  Obviously
there are a wide range of screen resolutions and aspect ratios out
there that we should support well.


> If you really want something to be done you have only 3 ways to do it:
> 1) Do it yourself. Patches are welcome.
> 2) Hire someone to do it. Many grub2 developpers including myself
> accept paid jobs in Free Software.
> 3) Forbid your kids to do it. New generation of Free Software devs is
> welcome

LOL @ #3!

Regards,
Colin

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Re: gfxmenu available in experimental

[Robert Millan]

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:17:51PM +0100, Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko wrote:
> Hello, all. After various delays with various cause I'm proud to
> announce the availability of Colin's gfxmenu into experimental branch of
> grub2.

Very nice!  Thanks Vladimir for reviewing this; and Colin, thank you very much
for your contribution to GRUB.

> Example menu is available at
> http://grub.gibibit.com/files/overlay_2009-07-19.tar.gz . It's not yet
> decided whether central repository for themes will be created.

There could be an official GRUB theme, which would go in our Bazaar repository,
and maybe also a separate  Debian theme (Felix and I need to discuss about
what we like best).  And I guess other distros will want to have their own
branding.

Other than that, it'd be good to have some central facility that could be
used by theme authors.  I'm not sure what kind of resource would be good,
but our Bazaar is NOT the right place.

Perhaps someone who's got more experience with artwork communities could
provide some advice?

Then again, perhaps we don't have to drive this ourselves, and if we do nothing
theme communities for GRUB will eventually take shape elsewhere.

> 3) Forbid your kids to do it. New generation of Free Software devs is
> welcome

Heh.  I guess I need to write some first ;-)

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."

Re: gfxmenu available in experimental

[Robert Millan]

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:17:51PM +0100, Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko wrote:
> Example menu is available at
> http://grub.gibibit.com/files/overlay_2009-07-19.tar.gz

Colin, we would need to know more details about the theme support files.

Are all the theme files in that tarball written by you?  Which images did
you make yourself?  I'm specially interested in the terminal-box ones.

Also, of the files that you made yourself, I'm considering that we could
use them in order to make a default GRUB theme.  Were they intended to be
merged in GRUB?  (i.e. can we assume that they are covered under your
contributor agreement?)

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."

Re: gfxmenu available in experimental

[Robert Millan]

On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 04:43:57PM +0100, Robert Millan wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:17:51PM +0100, Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko wrote:
> > Example menu is available at
> > http://grub.gibibit.com/files/overlay_2009-07-19.tar.gz
> 
> Colin, we would need to know more details about the theme support files.
> 
> Are all the theme files in that tarball written by you?  Which images did
> you make yourself?  I'm specially interested in the terminal-box ones.
> 
> Also, of the files that you made yourself, I'm considering that we could
> use them in order to make a default GRUB theme.  Were they intended to be
> merged in GRUB?  (i.e. can we assume that they are covered under your
> contributor agreement?)

I'm thinking that it'd be best to let distributors handle this.  If you can
just grab the files (both theme files and images) in that tarball made by
yourself and put them under an appropiate license (i.e. anything compatible
with GPLv3), then we could just package them up and push them to Debian.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."

Re: gfxmenu available in experimental

[Colin D Bennett]

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On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:43:57 +0100
Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:17:51PM +0100, Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder'
> Serbinenko wrote:
> > Example menu is available at
> > http://grub.gibibit.com/files/overlay_2009-07-19.tar.gz
> 
> Colin, we would need to know more details about the theme support
> files.
> 
> Are all the theme files in that tarball written by you?  Which images
> did you make yourself?  I'm specially interested in the terminal-box
> ones.

It would be easier perhaps if I list the elements that I did not create:

- The 'winter' background.
- The Ubuntu theme logo image/text.

Everything else I created using the GIMP and Inkscape, primarily.  The
terminal-box images for the 'winter' theme were created in Inkscape (I
think the theme source tarball includes the SVG source file, which is
exported to PNG files in slices by a shell script).  In Inkscape I
defined the slices so that the shell script can export them by name.

> Also, of the files that you made yourself, I'm considering that we
> could use them in order to make a default GRUB theme.  Were they
> intended to be merged in GRUB?  (i.e. can we assume that they are
> covered under your contributor agreement?)

The themes are not polished, and were really intended to drive the
back end of the menu system, for instance, to support circular
progress bars so that the Ubuntu theme could be created.

I certainly intend them to be included under my contributor agreement,
although obviously there are some elements such as the 'winter'
background that I did not create so these would be excluded.

Perhaps we can create some new themes that adapt to various screen
sizes, and if anyone wants to use elements of my theme work, they are
free to do so.

Regards,
Colin

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Re: gfxmenu available in experimental

[Felix Zielcke]

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Am Samstag, den 21.11.2009, 10:17 -0800 schrieb Colin D Bennett:
> On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:43:57 +0100
> Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:17:51PM +0100, Vladimir
> 'φ-coder/phcoder'
> > Serbinenko wrote:
> > > Example menu is available at
> > > http://grub.gibibit.com/files/overlay_2009-07-19.tar.gz
> > 
> > Colin, we would need to know more details about the theme support
> > files.
> > 
> > Are all the theme files in that tarball written by you?  Which
> images
> > did you make yourself?  I'm specially interested in the terminal-box
> > ones.
> 
> It would be easier perhaps if I list the elements that I did not
> create:
> 
> - The 'winter' background.
> - The Ubuntu theme logo image/text.
> 

What is with the fonts?
Helvetica is IIRC a font MacOS shipped with (or was it previous Windows
versions? At least my local Vista doestn't seem to have it)
And New Century Schoolbook seems to be a commercial font.
But what about all the other fonts you use?
Like all the 4x6.pf2 etc. ones? or lime or kate?

-- 
Felix Zielcke
Proud Debian Maintainer and GNU GRUB developer

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Re: gfxmenu available in experimental

[Robert Millan]

On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 10:17:01AM -0800, Colin D Bennett wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:43:57 +0100
> Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:17:51PM +0100, Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder'
> > Serbinenko wrote:
> > > Example menu is available at
> > > http://grub.gibibit.com/files/overlay_2009-07-19.tar.gz
> > 
> > Colin, we would need to know more details about the theme support
> > files.
> > 
> > Are all the theme files in that tarball written by you?  Which images
> > did you make yourself?  I'm specially interested in the terminal-box
> > ones.
> 
> It would be easier perhaps if I list the elements that I did not create:
> 
> - The 'winter' background.
> - The Ubuntu theme logo image/text.

What about the icons?  I assume you didn't create the MS Windows logo ;-)

> Everything else I created using the GIMP and Inkscape, primarily.  The
> terminal-box images for the 'winter' theme were created in Inkscape (I
> think the theme source tarball includes the SVG source file, which is
> exported to PNG files in slices by a shell script).  In Inkscape I
> defined the slices so that the shell script can export them by name.

We would need this SVG source (it isn't in the tarball).  Do you still have
it?

> I certainly intend them to be included under my contributor agreement,

Great!  I tried to adapt them to make something simpler that would be added
to GRUB tree, but I'm totally incompetent to make beautiful artwork.  Our
current options are:

  - Make a simple, unifont-based "GRUB theme" that could be added to our
    official tree and serve as reference for others.  It should include the
    basic graphical elements like terminal-box and linear/circular counters.

  - Have Debian include a package of themes for GRUB, based on your work.
    For that we would require that the parts you made are separated in a
    new tarball, and a suitable license be included.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."

Re: gfxmenu available in experimental

[Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko]

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Robert Millan wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:17:51PM +0100, Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko wrote:
>   
>> Hello, all. After various delays with various cause I'm proud to
>> announce the availability of Colin's gfxmenu into experimental branch of
>> grub2.
>>     
>
> Very nice!  Thanks Vladimir for reviewing this; and Colin, thank you very much
> for your contribution to GRUB.
>
>   
>> Example menu is available at
>> http://grub.gibibit.com/files/overlay_2009-07-19.tar.gz . It's not yet
>> decided whether central repository for themes will be created.
>>     
>
> There could be an official GRUB theme, which would go in our Bazaar repository,
>   
I don't see any special need for this. Perhaps only to promote GRUB. I
don't know if Bazaar is well suited for handling binary files though.
And as a GNU project we would need to check licenses of pictures, logos,
fonts and so on before we can include it. If such a check is a burden or
the result isn't clear I prefer not to have any theme at all. Actually I
prefer not to put any artwork in repository and if GNU is to distribute
a theme at all perhaps it could be just a tarball download from
alpha.gnu.org
> and maybe also a separate  Debian theme (Felix and I need to discuss about
> what we like best).  And I guess other distros will want to have their own
> branding.
>
>   
Distros are free to create their themes
> Other than that, it'd be good to have some central facility that could be
> used by theme authors.  I'm not sure what kind of resource would be good,
> but our Bazaar is NOT the right place.
>
>   
Agreed. I thought about something like http://www.gnome-look.org/.
Perhaps they would even agree to host GRUB themes too. This way we
offload the task but I don't know if GNU can recommend gnome-look.org.

-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko



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Re: gfxmenu available in experimental

[Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko]

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Colin D Bennett wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:17:51 +0100
> Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko <phcoder@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> Hello, all. After various delays with various cause I'm proud to
>> announce the availability of Colin's gfxmenu into experimental branch
>> of grub2.
>>     
>
> Thanks for keeping things moving forward even while I have not had time
> to do anything on gfxmenu for quite a while.
>
>   
>> Known issues with gfxmenu:
>> 1) It's slow. At least in qemu. More things are repainted than really
>> needed
>>     
>
> Yes, it is slow. Whether or not it was to best decision at the time, I
> decided during the Summer of Code that I would keep the painting logic
> simple as by always repainting the entire screen whenever anything
> changes.  (I wanted to support fancy features like animated
> transitions, backgrounds, and widgets, and I knew that double-buffering
> would be necessary for this.)
>
> It would perhaps be best to keep track of dirty regions and only repaint
> those parts -- however, this gets more complicated when page flipping is
> being used as a double-buffering method.
>
>   
I optimised it (pushed to branches/gfxmenu and experimental) and now it
runs pretty fast on qemu with 1024x768 resolution but this amount of
optimisation is far from maximum.
Now the 2 main speed problems are initialising (takes few seconds) and
scrolling in gfxterm (sluggish). Would you have an idea how to speed up
those 2?



-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko



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Re: gfxmenu available in experimental

[Colin D Bennett]

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On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:24:53 +0100
Felix Zielcke <fzielcke@z-51.de> wrote:

> Am Samstag, den 21.11.2009, 10:17 -0800 schrieb Colin D Bennett:
> > On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:43:57 +0100
> > Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:17:51PM +0100, Vladimir
> > 'φ-coder/phcoder'
> > > Serbinenko wrote:
> > > > Example menu is available at
> > > > http://grub.gibibit.com/files/overlay_2009-07-19.tar.gz
> > > 
> > > Colin, we would need to know more details about the theme support
> > > files.
> > > 
> > > Are all the theme files in that tarball written by you?  Which
> > images
> > > did you make yourself?  I'm specially interested in the
> > > terminal-box ones.
> > 
> > It would be easier perhaps if I list the elements that I did not
> > create:
> > 
> > - The 'winter' background.
> > - The Ubuntu theme logo image/text.
> > 
> 
> What is with the fonts?
> Helvetica is IIRC a font MacOS shipped with (or was it previous
> Windows versions? At least my local Vista doestn't seem to have it)
> And New Century Schoolbook seems to be a commercial font.
> But what about all the other fonts you use?
> Like all the 4x6.pf2 etc. ones? or lime or kate?
 
I don't know about my Helvetica font--it may just be a
different sans-serif font.  And New Century Schoolbook was somehow
provided by a Gentoo package, apparently.  If it's commerical I will
make sure to take it down.

The lime & kate fonts are from the GPL2'ed Artwiz fonts:
<http://artwizaleczapka.sourceforge.net/>

The 4x6, etc. fonts are the X.org stock bitmap fonts exported using
xmbfed.

Regards,
Colin

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Re: gfxmenu available in experimental

[Felix Zielcke]

Am Freitag, den 20.11.2009, 23:17 +0100 schrieb Vladimir
'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko:
> Hello, all. After various delays with various cause I'm proud to
> announce the availability of Colin's gfxmenu into experimental branch
> of
> grub2. 

I'm proud to announce it's finally avaible in Debian experimental
(Thanks Robert) and in my Ubuntu ppa for the karmic users with all the
Ubuntu changes merged in this time.

Colin, I suggest you make a little update to the journal on your site.
I could imagine that some people only follow that and not grub-devel.

-- 
Felix Zielcke
Proud Debian Maintainer and GNU GRUB developer