[syslinux] setting sound indicators for Isolinux menu selections

[Ady]

> Hello,
> I am an active member of the Vinux community and have taken on a project of
> remastering a Ubuntu installation Cd in order to make it accessable to a
> blind user. I am able to sound the system bell when the boot menu loads by
> adding a ^G to the label statement which works well to tell a blind user
> they are at the boot menu. My intent is to sound the bell at each menu item,
> but I'm unable to do so since I'm only able to use the hotkey once. My
> questions is, is it possible to set an "onselect" function that would sound
> the bell each time the selection changed? I'm looking at the "say" command
> but I'm unsure if that will accomplish my goal. Any suggestions would be
> greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jeff Malewski
> 

I am just a simple user of Syslinux, so I cannot actually contribute 
to the question about new directives.

With your "^G" comment I guess you mean the ASCII 7 character in 
so-called DISPLAY files (those that are activated by F1-F12 keys or 
by the DISPLAY directive). For every ASCII 7 character in each 
display file, the speaker beeps. It seems this would not be an 
adequate solution to "beep on menu selection".

I have seen distros using Syslinux with GFXBoot where F1-F12 keys can 
perform (or trigger) an "action" (as oppose to just displaying a 
DISPLAY text file with no additional consequence), so maybe with such 
method there is a possibility to also add a beep (just as with ASCII 
7) when a specific F1-F12 key is pressed. If more than one beep could 
be added, then the length of the beeps could potentially indicate 
which key was pressed.

Yet, that possibility would mean that a certain action was already 
triggered. Still under the "Syslinux with GFXboot" assumption, a 
two-step selection procedure might help. F1 key would make one beep 
and would load one specific config file. Pressing F1 key again would 
make an additional beep and would actually start the specific boot 
entry. But if the second time a different key would be pressed (say, 
F2), a different config file (corresponding to F2) would be selected 
and two beeps would sound (or a two-seconds beep). Now if F2 is 
pressed again, then the same sound is heard and the selected boot 
entry (which corresponds to F2) would load.

As we all could assume, all the above, even _IF_ possible - of which, 
I am not so sure - would not be as simple as what Syslinux usually 
offers, so probably a new set of directives that would trigger 
(different) sound(s) or different duration of beeps for each menu 
selection (in menu.c32 after each label directive, if an additional 
global directive is set) would probably be better.

Of course, "menu selected" is not the same as "some key was pressed", 
and "menu selected" doesn't mean the boot entry was actually 
triggered (yet).

I hope it makes some sense.

Best Regards,
Ady.