[syslinux] Opinions about timeout

Jim Cromie jim.cromie at gmail.com
Tue Aug 30 15:39:37 PDT 2005


H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> Jim Cromie wrote:
>
>>
>> If someone doesnt like the existing timeout, they can always hit TAB 
>> on any selection.
>> That stops the countdown indefinitely, and escape brings you back, 
>> allowing you
>> to choose another item.
>>
>> All else being equal, customers prefer menus,
>> and whether this glitch-prevention timeout was paranoid is irrelevant;
>> its in now, and harmless. (unless its clutter that makes the next 
>> feature harder)
>>
>
> It *is* actually harmful, because it breaks a common usage scenario, 
> which is to have a quite short (a couple of seconds) timeout for the 
> common boot option.  This requires that any interactive action on the 
> part of the user interrupts the timeout, and yes, it's the same thing 
> as for the CLI.


the way i see it working currently, if you hit a hotkey without also 
hitting enter,
it will curently time out (perhaps too quickly), and boot whatever 
default is
(1st item if not specified).

Choosing a non-hotkey does not halt the countdown (it only restarts it),
nor does a single hotkey-like serial glitch - it would take a tab-like 
glitch
to hose things by a full halt.  If *that* is too risky, it seems like 
theyve reached
the point of paranoia where Id just say 'dont use menus then'

Perhaps a longer restart-countdown-after-hotkey is what you want,
and easier.  It would leave the menu up for say 30 seconds before 
resuming the
~3 second syslinux-to-boot-item delay.

>
> I tried hacking in the "grand timeout" option, but it seems to require 
> some pretty painful code restructuring, which seems unlikely to happen 
> at this time.
>
>     -hpa
>
>




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