Re: [ros-dev] Freeldr Question

[Alex Ionescu]

Hi Brian,

That's exactly what I'm saying. Removing GUI Mode. It's never existed, 
and I doubt it will ever exist. Of course the Mach "Vtables" are useful 
and required to objectify low-level calls and route-them through 
different functions, but since GUI mode doesn't exist and never has 
existed it's only making things complicated for no reason.

You can't keep a feature in just because "mabe one day we'll need it". 
Nobody has touched it in 4, 5 years now? I've given technical arguments 
on why this UI abstraction is a bad idea, do you have any for the pro 
side, except that "one day it might be needed?". Because if we apply 
that to everything then we'll end up with a million wrappers.

I know you wrote most of Freeloader but you have to be willing to accept 
that you haven't had a lot of time to work on it (or else I assume you'd 
have coded GUI mode by now) and that it's time to allow people to 
improve it, if it's for the best, even if it doesn't match your grand 
ideas (trust me, I know it's hard).

Right now this abstraction is a technical mistake and offers no 
benefits. I've been wanting to remove it for a year now, but I gave it a 
chance to see if anyone was interested in using it; all I saw was people 
b*tching about how much GUI freeloder -already- has.

If a company wants a company logo one day, let them pay us for the 
feature and listen what, I'll code it myself. It's not hard to revert 
some code.

Anyways, I won't press the issue farther; I've stated my position.

Best regards,
Alex Ionescu

Brian Palmer wrote:

>  Alex,
>
> I don't see the point of what you are trying to do. IIRC, all of
> FreeLoader's code is organized like the UI stuff - you just make generic
> calls and the abstraction code handles the details. It's kind of like C++
> objects, only not. Take, for instance, FreeLoader's file system code, it is
> the exact same way. You just call generic routines like open, close, read,
> and write, and the file system code checks what file system it is and
> redirects the function call accordingly.
>
> Unless I don't understand what you are proposing, it sounds like you want to
> just lump all the UI code into one huge file. And I think that is a step
> backward from the current design. I'll admit that checking the UI type on
> every call and calling the GUI code or the TUI code isn't the most efficient
> way. And you could make it more efficient by setting up pointers to
> functions.
>
> But unless you are talking about removing the GUI code altogether (it isn't
> used currently) you will still have to do the checks to see if DrawBox(),
> etc. needs to go to the TUI code or the GUI code. Now don't get me wrong, I
> don't think removing the GUI code is the right thing to do. It is a very
> good starting point for someone to make a graphical menu system for
> FreeLoader. It would be very cool someday to be able to set a company logo
> or something as background image in the boot screen.
>
> I'd like to know more about what you are thinking...
>
> -Brian
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ros-dev-bounces(a)reactos.org [mailto:[e-mail]] On
> Behalf Of Alex Ionescu
> Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 9:17 PM
> To: ReactOS Development List
> Subject: Re: [ros-dev] Freeldr Question
>
> Hi Brian,
>
> No, it would keep the same GUI as it has now, since people seem 
> comfortable with it. (I did get a lot of requests for the NTLDR-like 
> interface and I might code one in as an optional interface since it's 
> only 30 lines of code, but that's beside the question at the moment).
>
> The reasoning is like I said earlier, tidying up the code and reducing 
> complexity in the software, which are very important parts of good 
> development and a scalable codebase.
>
> Best regards,
> Alex Ionescu
>
> Brian Palmer wrote:
>
>   
>
> >So are you going to implement a GUI for it then? Or what is the reasoning
> >behind this change?
> >
> >-Brian
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: ros-dev-bounces(a)reactos.org [mailto:[e-mail]] On
> >Behalf Of Alex Ionescu
> >Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 8:18 PM
> >To: ReactOS Development List
> >Subject: Re: [ros-dev] Freeldr Question
> >
> >Brian/Art
> >
> >I just want to make all drawings calls directly "Tui" instead of 
> >"Ui"->CheckMode->"Tui" and combine gui.c/tui.c/tuimenu.c and
> gui/ui/tui.h
> >Nothign else would change.
> >
> >Best regards,
> >Alex Ionescu
> >
> >Brian Palmer wrote:
> >
> > 
> >
> >    
> >
> >>Hi,
> >>
> >>So in what way do you propose changing it? How will it work after you're
> >>done?
> >>
> >>-Brian
> >>
> >>-----Original Message-----
> >>From: ros-dev-bounces(a)reactos.org [mailto:[e-mail]] On
> >>Behalf Of Alex Ionescu
> >>Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 6:36 PM
> >>To: ReactOS Development List
> >>Subject: [ros-dev] Freeldr Question
> >>
> >>Hi,
> >>
> >>Freeldr currently contains an ugly (imo) wrapper around the GUI where 
> >>every drawing operation is supposed to have multiple "modes" (some fancy
>
> >>3d gizmo whizmo GUI and the normal text-mode interface). I would really 
> >>like to simply this interface and make the drawing operations much 
> >>simpler and just draw, instead of going through all the hoops they do 
> >>now. But before I do, does anyone have any objections? Is anyone working 
> >>on  fancy 3D GUI for Freeldr, or can I go ahead with my changes? Note 
> >>nothing would change to the user, everything will look and act the exact 
> >>same way as it does now.
> >>
> >>Best regards,
> >>Alex Ionescu
> >>
> >>
> >>   
> >>
> >>      
> >>