Re: Ideas for v2.1 (colour bootup msgs)
Albert Cahalan (albert@ccs.neu.edu)
Tue, 18 Jun 1996 18:19:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: Colin Coghill <colin@utf.gen.nz>
> On Mon, 17 Jun 1996, John Sullivan wrote:
> >
> > In the kernel you make a call like printk(KERN_WARN"<GREEN> foo
> > starting\n"), nothing technically needs to handle this. If the final
> > logging entity *knows* we are running on a standard on-board vga
> > console, in can translate the extra tags into the correct escape
> > sequences with little extra cost. You could even customize an xconsole
>
> Oh dear, I supposed I'd better be the one to be first to mention that
> we should markup by content, not by appearance. :-)
>
> printk(KERN_WARN,"<KERN PRIORITY=WARN>Foo starting </KERN>");
>
> anyone? :-)
>
> Personally, I think that although colour bootup would be very nice,
> it's just too much of an ugly hack to be worth it...
It would be very good if messages above a certain level were highlighted.
Anything abnormal and/or terrible should be colored, underlined, blinking,
bold, or whatever the display can do.
For PC video, perhaps there is an attribute byte that stands out well
in both mono and color modes. It doesn't need to look pretty. It
needs to jump out and scream "THERE IS A VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM".
Blinking bright white on red maybe?