Hi Wolfgang,
On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Wolfgang Denk wd@denx.de wrote:
Dear Simon Glass,
In message CAPnjgZ12psS6sOnsuMU-VrrXWxS04Zb+grqqGUKNw2DTzBupag@mail.gmail.com you wrote:
We are currently using a very rudimentary graphics features attached to U-Boot. It can only display bitmap images. We use this in Chromium to composite a display for the various screens we need to display in U-Boot. Unfortunately the graphics screens get quite large when using multiple languages since they are pre-rendered.
Is there any interest in a simply graphics library in U-Boot, that can display things on the screen? We already have bitmap support, but could perhaps add outline font support (e.g. freetype) as well. This might allow display of simple boot menus or booting information. A board could create a structure containing a list of things to display (text, bitmaps) and pass it to the graphics library for rendering using existing functions and the new font support.
This sounds like a nice feature. Initially. Then I start wondering if this really belongs into a boot loader. Instead of doing fancy graphics stuff, we should IMO rather focus on booting the OS of your choice really fast, and let this do the fancy GUIs. Or?
The problem is that a major purpose of the GUIs is to allow installing an OS from a USB stick/SD card, since the OS may have become corrupted and unbootable. We have looked at keeping around a separate OS image for this (e.g. in an available disk partition), but so far that hasn't proved practical since that itself can be fairly easily overwritten and we then have a doorstop.
The less fancy, the better, but consumers have certain expectations that force us to make some efforts...there is already a single font in U-Boot, but it's not good enough for multi-language pretty displays unfortunately.
Regards, Simon
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk
-- DENX Software Engineering GmbH, MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd@denx.de "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." - Mark Twain