nanogui: Showing a static picture during system initialization
Subject:
Showing a static picture during system initialization
From:
Ricardo Jasinski ####@####.####
Date:
19 May 2009 13:05:24 -0000
Message-Id: <ee9633130905190605u6557f913yc6ab6f3b97c48814@mail.gmail.com>
Hi everyone,
we've being developing an application using nano-X and uClinux for a while,
and now it's almost time to get it deployed.
One thing that's still bugging us is that, during the long time it takes the
application to load (about 2 minutes), the user stares at a green empty
screen (nanowm background) for about 1 minute, and then watches as many
windows are created and repositioned on the screen. I must confess it
doesn't look quite "professional" yet.
So we were analyzing our options, and we think it would be nice if we could
display an image (company logo or whatsoever) on the screen, during the
whole initialization process. Of course it would be even better if we could
display a progress bar as well, but that would be a plus.
We have broken down the initialization process into 3 steps:
- OS boot (about 10 seconds)
- application loading (1 minute)
- application initialization (about 30 seconds)
Right now we are thinking that each step would take its own approach:
- during OS boot, we managed to replace the traditional penguin logo with
an (almost) full-screen image. We simply enabled a few options (bootup logo,
framebuffer console, support for binding and unbinding console drivers). We
unbind the console right before starting nanowm. - when the application
is loading (copying itself from SD card to RAM), which takes 1 minute,
nanowm is already running, so I guess we could run a simpler application
just to show a message or a picture on the screen. We are not doing that
yet, but it would not be problematic, I guess.
- the application initialization is the trickiest part. During about 30
seconds, many FLTK windows are drawn and repositioned on screen, all of
which is visible to the user. In the end, one of the windows is maximized
and stays in front of the others, and windows are switched as required by
the application.
My question is: is there a simple way to hide this whole initialization mess
from the user? It feels like there should be one ore more ways to do it, but
I can't see how.
I'll just throw in some ideas, maybe you could comment on any of them or
(better yet) contribute with better ones. Note that I don't necessarily know
how to implement the suggestions below, or even if they are at all possible:
- using a different (dummy) display driver until everything is ready, and
then switching to the real one which would write to the framebuffer
- telling FLTK (or nano-X) not to draw anything until everything is ready
- manually changind the framebuffer pointer
- shutting down the LCD (that would be cheating!)
I would be glad to hear any thoughts and comments on this subject. Thanks in
advance,
Ricardo.
----------------------------------------------
Ricardo P. Jasinski
UTFPR Microelectronics Lab
+55 41 3310 4756
