[syslinux] 5.10 DISPLAY files (and SAY directive) issues

Ady ady-sf at hotmail.com
Thu Mar 21 05:17:55 PDT 2013


Hello Syslinux Team,

The following scenario shows some issues when using DISPLAY files 
(and the SAY directive).

 *** help.txt start *** 
LINE 1 OF help.txt
LINE 2 OF help.txt
LINE 3 (one before last) OF help.txt
                   USE F1 TO TEST
 *** help.txt end *** 

Note: in "help.txt", there are no initial nor ending blank lines. 
After the last line:
"                   USE F1 TO TEST"
there is no additional LF/CR.

 *** syslinux.cfg start *** 
DEFAULT cat1
PROMPT 1
SAY This is the 1st initial "S A Y" directive
SAY This is the 2nd (last) initial "S A Y" directive
DISPLAY help.txt
SAY This is the 1st ending "S A Y" directive
SAY This is the 2nd (last) ending "S A Y" directive
F1 help.txt
LABEL cat1
COM32 cat.c32
APPEND help.txt
 *** syslinux.cfg end *** 

I tested the above with ISOLINUX 5.10pre2.

After booting with the above cfg file, the third "say" directive is 
presented in the SAME row as the last line of "help.txt" (shown by 
the DISPLAY directive), right after the last character of "help.txt" 
(at least the SAY statement doesn't overwrite the last line of 
"help.txt"). The expected behavior for the SAY directive should be to 
present a new (next) line; right?

After booting with the above cfg file (and after noting the 
aforementioned behavior), press F1. Note that the last line of 
"help.txt" is now OVERWRITTEN by the "boot:" prompt. In this case, 
the expected behavior for the F1-F12 keys should be to show the 
"boot:" prompt (when the F1-F12 key was pressed while being in CLI) 
right after the last character of the displayed "help.txt" file, in 
the same line (so the already displayed text is not scrolled up and 
its last line not overwritten either).

After booting with the above cfg file, and after pressing F1 (and 
after noting the two aforementioned behaviors), press [ENTER] so to 
execute the default label ("cat1"). Now the last line of "help.txt" 
is displayed too, and the "boot:" prompt us shown in the same line 
right after its last character. So the complete text is displayed 
(not overwritten), while there is no scrolling of the text (which is 
correct / adequate). The result of the "boot:" prompt being shown 
right after the last character of the "help.txt" file might be not 
"pretty", but it is better than overwriting the last line of 
"help.txt" and better than scrolling the already-displayed text.

I hope the current behavior can be improved / corrected, so (old) 
DISPLAY files (and the SAY directive) can still be used as expected.

TIA,
Ady.


More information about the Syslinux mailing list