Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/3] Add BIOS splash image support

[Anthony Liguori]

Blue Swirl wrote:
> On 12/16/08, Laurent Vivier <address@hidden> wrote:
>   
> > This series of patches adds a nice BIOS startup splash screen.
> >
> >  It adds a "-splash" option allowing to specify the picture file name (a 
> > 640x480 (or less) and true color PNG) to display. You can enable/disable fade in,
> >  fade out and bootmenu. The time to display the image can be also given (in
> >  seconds).
> >
> >  Idea and some parts of code are stollen from VirtualBox (GPLv2/CDDL).
> >
> >  [PATCH 1/3] Correct fw_cfg_add_callback()
> >  [PATCH 2/3] [BIOS] Add splash image support
> >  [PATCH 3/3] [QEMU] Add BIOS splash image
> >     
>
> On second thought, there is no Gtk/Qt GUI because that is supposed to
> be external to Qemu. By the same logic, why should there be any splash
> screen? The external GUI can probably show it as easily using the same
> Gtk/Qt/whatever.

You need it to be consistent on the SDL/VNC display.

Modern BIOSes have splash screens.  I don't see why our BIOS shouldn't 
have one too.

>  The control channel may still be needed.
>
> Alternatively the BIOS could load the image and fade parameters from a
> new ROM or from the configuration device and draw it to screen. This
> would need some PNG support to BIOS, or that the image stored in raw
> form.
>   

Yeah, having QEMU render to the VGA directly is a bit ugly.  It would be 
nicer if the BIOS actually rendered the image but I'm not sure I think 
we should reject the patch just because it doesn't.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori


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