1 Text User Interface using comboot
2 ---------------------------------
4 This is a menu system written by Murali Krishnan Ganapathy and ported
5 from OpenWatcom to gcc by HPA. It is currently being maintained by the
8 To configure the menus, you need to set up a menu configuration file
9 to have the menu items you desire, then build the menu system using
10 make. You can use either simple.c or complex.c as a starting point
11 for your own menu configuration file; then add the name with a .c32
12 extension to the MENUS list in the Makefile.
14 The resulting code is a 32-bit COMBOOT code, and hence can be executed
15 only under syslinux. You can use tools like bochs to help debug your
18 Menu Features currently supported are:
23 * invisible items (useful for dynamic menus), and
25 * Context sensitive help
27 * Editing commands associated with items
31 * Arrow Keys, PgUp, PgDn, Home, End Keys
32 * Space to switch state of a checkbox
33 * Enter to choose the item
34 * Escape to exit from it
39 This is a general purpose menu system implemented using only BIOS calls,
40 so it can be executed in a COMBOOT environment as well. It is highly
41 customizable. Some features include:
44 Display any help information associated with each menu item.
46 Specify a window within which the menu system draws all its menu's.
47 It is upto the user to ensure that the menu's fit within the window.
48 * Positioning submenus
49 By default, each submenu is positioned just below the corresponding
50 entry of the parent menu. However, the user may position each menu
51 at a specific location of his choice. This is useful, when the menu's
53 * Registering handlers for each menu item
54 This is mainly used for checkboxes and radiomenu's, where a selection may
55 result in disabling other menu items/checkboxes
56 * Global Screen Handler
57 This is called every time the menu is redrawn. The user can display
58 additional information (usually outside the window where the menu is
59 being displayed). See the complex.c for an example, where the global
60 handler is used to display the choices made so far.
62 This is called every time the user presses a key which the menu
63 system does not understand. This can be used to display context
64 sensitive help. See complex.c for how to use this hook to implement
65 a context sensitive help system as well as "On the fly" editing
66 of commands associated with menus.
68 With each item one can register a shortcut key from [A-Za-z0-9].
69 Pressing a key within that range, will take you to the next item
70 with that shortcut key (so you can have multiple items with the
71 same shortcut key). The default shortcut key for each item, is
72 the lower case version of the first char of the item in the range
75 Each item entry can have a substring enclosed in < and >. This part
76 is highlighted. Can be used to highlight the shortcut keys. By default
77 if an item has a <, then the first char inside < and > in the range
78 [A-Za-z0-9] is converted to lower case and set as the shortcut key.
80 The user can register an ontimeout handler, which gets called if
81 no key has been pressed for a user specific amount of time (default 5 min).
82 For an example see the complex.c file.
86 * The Watcom developers and Peter Anvin for figuring out an OS
87 independent startup code.
88 * Thomas for porting the crypt function and removing all C library
90 * Peter Anvin for porting the code to GCC
92 - Murali (gmurali+guicd@cs.uchicago.edu)