[syslinux] setting sound indicators for Isolinux menu selections

[Jeffrey Malewski]

Hi Ady,
I appreciate your reply although I don't fully understand your thought on
the use of the DISPLAY directive. The "^G" is as you assumed the ascii 7
which sounds the system bell and I've found adding it to the first label
statemt will beep the pc speaker when the menu loads. That will work as a
bare minimum to let a blind user know the menu has loaded. I read something
on the Grml blog greacently announcing their latest release had sound
indicators for each menu item and I had hoped to implement something
similar. I've also found that Grub can be configured to produce tones of
different lengths for each menu item, but their approach won't work with
syslinux/isolinux. Adding the ^G to each label statement doesn't help since
syslinux only looks at the first instance. My thought is a global setting
much like the menu color hotsel statement that highlights the active menu
item. My understanding of "say" is that it will print text to the display
although I'm unsure if "say ^G" would beep the pc speaker each time it is
invoked. Further experimenting with "say" and maybe a look at how Grml has
implemented thair sound indicators.

Best Regards,
Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: syslinux-bounces at zytor.com [mailto:syslinux-bounces at zytor.com] On
Behalf Of Ady
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2013 2:16 PM
To: syslinux at zytor.com
Subject: Re: [syslinux] setting sound indicators for Isolinux menu
selections


> 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.
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