Re: Nice Text (No Icky Text)

Paul Flinders (paul@dawa.demon.co.uk)
25 Mar 1997 18:26:28 +0000

bofh@snoopy.virtual.net.au writes:
> I think that we could get more benefit from having a nicer display
> of text messages than from a graphical splash-screen. What I would
> like to see is a screen that's similar to a HP workstation booting
> where you have check boxes for various bits of hardware and drivers
> which get ticked at appropriate stages of the boot up process. It
> looks nice, and clearly shows what's going on, unlike the Linux
> kernel. Would it be that difficult to get different drivers to
> display their messages in a common format for ease of reading?
> Russell Coker

Well the `nice' HP start-up that you're thinking of is the RC
script. The kernel start-up is just as messy, if slightly less
verbose.

Aside - HP clearly has some crazy shell programmers. Their RC script
has the escape codes for HP terminals embedded into echos to do the
fancy output (which is all text BTW, no graphics) and they have
printer interface scripts which generate PCL on the fly for the burst
pages (including a nice halftone grey background with a border around
it for the job details.