[Qemu-devel] [UI] suggestion

[Qemu-devel] [UI] suggestion

[Ronald]

Hi,

just a thought about user interface, couln't an OSD be an elegant solution
to keep qemu independant of toolkits?

 

Re: [Qemu-devel] [UI] suggestion

[Joseph Stewart]

Hello Ronald,

What is an OSD? In my development world (embedded settop) that means
"On Screen Display"... is this what you're referring to?

-j

On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 17:41:16 +0200, Ronald <look@reply.to> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> just a thought about user interface, couln't an OSD be an elegant solution
> to keep qemu independant of toolkits?
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
>

[Qemu-devel] Re: [UI] suggestion

[Ronald]

Le Wed, 01 Sep 2004 11:43:29 -0400, Joseph Stewart a écrit :

> Hello Ronald,
> 
> What is an OSD? In my development world (embedded settop) that means "On
> Screen Display"... is this what you're referring to?
> 
> -j

Yes this is what I mean.

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [UI] suggestion

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Wed, 2004-09-01 at 08:49, Ronald wrote:
> Le Wed, 01 Sep 2004 11:43:29 -0400, Joseph Stewart a écrit :
> 
> > Hello Ronald,
> > 
> > What is an OSD? In my development world (embedded settop) that means "On
> > Screen Display"... is this what you're referring to?
> > 
> > -j
> 
> Yes this is what I mean.


That is a very strange idea but intriguing, in a David Lynch movie kind
of way.

Would you elaborate?

-- John.

[Qemu-devel] Re: Re: [UI] suggestion

[Ronald]

Le Wed, 01 Sep 2004 10:06:22 -0700, John R. Hogerhuis a écrit :

> On Wed, 2004-09-01 at 08:49, Ronald wrote:
>> Le Wed, 01 Sep 2004 11:43:29 -0400, Joseph Stewart a écrit :
>> 
>> > Hello Ronald,
>> > 
>> > What is an OSD? In my development world (embedded settop) that means
>> > "On Screen Display"... is this what you're referring to?
>> > 
>> > -j
>> 
>> Yes this is what I mean.
> 
> 
> That is a very strange idea but intriguing, in a David Lynch movie kind of
> way.
> 
> Would you elaborate?
> 
> -- John.

Sure, I explain:

Instead of having gui for every platform supported by qemu, the qemu
display could be the ui.
Perhaps taking an example would be simpler for me:
what is qemu doing for now is taking his options from the command line,
then launching a display (a window). If qemu was launching his display
earlier, config param (bios path, disk image etc) could be entered in a
menu on screen - and perhaps written on a config file, session - Sorry if
this seems strange, it's just an idea.

Et maintenant en français:

Ce que je pensais: plutôt que d'intégrer une GUI pour chaque système,
utiliser la fenêtre créée par qemu, un peu comme le menu disponible
avec mplayer ou plus généralement -et bêtement- les jeux win ou linux.
C'est juste une idée comme ça, mais par exemple un menu option au
premier lancement de qemu, accessible par la suite par une touche.
    

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: Re: [UI] suggestion

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Wed, 2004-09-01 at 10:35, Ronald wrote:
> Le Wed, 01 Sep 2004 10:06:22 -0700, John R. Hogerhuis a écrit :
> 
> > On Wed, 2004-09-01 at 08:49, Ronald wrote:
> >> Le Wed, 01 Sep 2004 11:43:29 -0400, Joseph Stewart a écrit :
> >> 
> >> > Hello Ronald,
> >> > 
> >> > What is an OSD? In my development world (embedded settop) that means
> >> > "On Screen Display"... is this what you're referring to?
> >> > 
> >> > -j
> >> 
> >> Yes this is what I mean.
> > 
> > 
> > That is a very strange idea but intriguing, in a David Lynch movie kind of
> > way.
> > 
> > Would you elaborate?

> Sure, I explain:
> 
> Instead of having gui for every platform supported by qemu, the qemu
> display could be the ui.
> Perhaps taking an example would be simpler for me:
> what is qemu doing for now is taking his options from the command line,
> then launching a display (a window). If qemu was launching his display
> earlier, config param (bios path, disk image etc) could be entered in a
> menu on screen - and perhaps written on a config file, session - Sorry if
> this seems strange, it's just an idea.
> 

Ah, I think this is just a curses type of GUI for QEMU. One could just
add some menus to the "monitor". It's not OSD.

When you said OSD, I was thinking something like you get on a television
when you turn the volume up and down. I'd never thought of it before but
it is uniquely applicable to an emulator. Often the guest is running at
the same resolution as the host. To allow the user to control the
machine, VmWare et al have to use a lot of funny tricks to make a menu
bar pop up and go away. You usually lose little usable bits of the
screen. If the machine was controllable by OSD display, that would leave
the whole screen are still available for the guest.

-- John.

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: Re: [UI] suggestion

[Lionel Ulmer]

On Wed, Sep 01, 2004 at 07:35:44PM +0200, Ronald wrote:
> Instead of having gui for every platform supported by qemu, the qemu
> display could be the ui.

This is basically what ScummVM is doing as they have their own 'in-game' GUI
system for loading / saving games, choosing the game to 'emulate', ...

It's working, but I still thing this is a bit flawed as you will re-invent
the wheel (yet another widget library) and it won't be the 'theme' of the
native UI. I agree though that this would be pretty nice once QEMU is
started for 'in-game UI' as John explained (for example, having the GUI to
eject / insert a new CD-ROM to be an overlay instead of having to swap to
the console - this would work nicely on people using QEMU full-screen). One
could even imagine this overlay alpha blended for all these eye-candy buffs
out there.

For the whole 'launcher / configuration / choose an image' stuff, I still
think a 'native' GUI would be best. And the easiest way to integrate this in
QEMU would be to have some driver API. To access the 'screen', a simple
'Lock / Unlock' API would be enough (so a GTK front-end would need to have a
GdkImage and just implement these function to write on this image, whereas a
Win32 front-end would use, for example, a windowed DirectDrawSurface to do
the same).

On the other hand, as I only use QEMU on Linux and the command line is just
fine for my needs, I won't volunteer for the task of designing the API (just
maybe for reviewing it if anyone proposes something).

         Lionel

-- 
		 Lionel Ulmer - http://www.bbrox.org/

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: Re: [UI] suggestion

[Kai Cherry]

This is in fact, a damned good idea, at least on the surface. it 
appeals to the coder in me, and that whole cross-platform constancy 
thing :)

Now, speaking for my "peeps" (the OS X ones)  I can tell you that they 
will hate it for *setup* purposes (a 'document centric' approach would 
be preferred I think)
but for in situ stats and feedback (disk changes, drive access 
indicators, etc) I think this would be a boon...folks seem to dig 
Blinkenlights :)

-K

On Sep 1, 2004, at 1:35 PM, Ronald wrote:

> If qemu was launching his display
> earlier, config param (bios path, disk image etc) could be entered in a
> menu on screen - and perhaps written on a config file, session - Sorry 
> if
> this seems strange, it's just an idea