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.