Re: Outline menu

[Vesa Jääskeläinen]

Markus Elfring wrote:
>> And what is wrong with current config file?
>> http://grub.enbug.org/grub.cfg
> 
> How much documentation is available for this domain-specific language?
> Does a grammar exist for the data format?

Marco Gerards has been working on the grub scripting language. So he
might be able to give some insights in case Wiki does not feature enough
information.

> http://grub.enbug.org/Subprojects/GraphicalMenu
> 
> I imagine that additional attributes will be needed.
> - Identifier: optional alphanumeric key
> - Parent: index number or menu identifier

Menu commands can have children already so you would get hierarchy
information from there. Shortcut key you could just add as extra
argument for menu, like --hotkey="1"

In example:

menu "foo" {
  menu "bar" {
    menu "zot" {
    }
  }
}

Though I am not sure how well this outline view is supported by the
current parser. Marco, perhaps you could share some insights?

> I hope that it can be avoided to reinvent a wheel. How much features would you
> like to copy from OML or OPML?

I had a look at example mp3 playlist in opml format and it seems to be
data description language (like what xml is). What we have in grub
script is a scripting language that has commands to construct data (menu).

>> You can read my idea of visual layout from "Layout testing for graphical
>> menu" in mailing list archive:
>> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2007-10/msg00103.html
> 
> How much will a browser depend on an operating system?

In case you mean graphical menu, then it does not depend on any
operating system. GRUB is standalone application that executes on system
context.

> How near will a boot environment come to OS functionality?

That I leave unanswered.