1 Information about the textmenu chooser
2 --------------------------------------
3 Copyright (C) 2002-2003 Hewlett-Packard Co.
4 Contributed by <rhirst@linuxcare.com>
9 Command line option: -C textmenu
10 Config file option: chooser=textmenu
12 The textmenu chooser provides a facility whereby you can draw a colour
13 boot screen, using line-drawing characters to give the impression of a
14 dialog box, with a scrollable menu from which a boot image can be chosen
15 via cursor up/down keys. A one-line input field is provided for additional
16 parameter input. Menu entries are taken from the description= fields in
19 The message file format is based on that used for syslinux/isolinux on ia32
20 platforms, which is copyright H. Peter Anvin. It is basically a text file
21 containing text and graphic characters, along with some control codes to
22 specify colour attributes, menu, and prompt field positions. There are two
23 classes of message files; the main file, specified via message=, which
24 includes menu and prompt field markers, and the additional help files which
25 are invoked via function keys. Graphic characters are taken from the
26 standard IBM VGA character set, and using an appropriate font makes file
27 creation easier. Under Linux you can find a VGA font in the dosemu package.
28 Included in the elilo source is sys2ansi.pl (taken from syslinux), which can
29 be used to translate colour attributes such that they display correctly in an
34 0x01 ^A Mark top left or bottom right of menu area. Current attributes
35 at top left marker are used for inactive menu entries, current
36 attributes when bottom right marker is found are used for the
37 currently active menu attributes.
39 0x02 ^B Mark left- or right-hand end of the prompt field. Current attributes
40 at the left had end are used to display and parameters entered.
42 0x0A ^J Linefeed, does implied carriage return.
46 0x0D ^M Carriage return; ignored so files can be 'DOS' or 'UNIX' format.
48 0x0F ^O Attribute specfication; Two hex digits should follow this code, the
49 first being the background colour required, the second the foreground.
51 0 = black 8 = dark grey
52 1 = dark blue 9 = bright blue
53 2 = dark green a = bright green
54 3 = dark cyan b = bright cyan
55 4 = dark red c = bright red
56 5 = dark purple d = bright purple
58 7 = light grey f = white
60 An example of a config file and message file are included in the examples