Enhanced Boot Menu

[azenla]

Development on sprout has thus far focused on technical feasibility, but now that it seems possible, it's time to implementing rendering of an enhanced boot menu!

For reference code on how it could be done, I'm thinking we look at systemd-boot for inspiration as their menu is super simple: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/main/src/boot/boot.c

@kaniini also mentioned some thoughts on the boot menu that might require some changes to how entries work, specifically localization.

[Conan-Kudo]

I would like to see graphical menu support with pointing/touch input support. I know that this adds much more complexity, but it would also mean that the boot menu would be reasonably useful on devices that completely lack a keyboard-style input or buttons at all (like several tablets and mobile devices).

I've been pretty disappointed over the past few years that we haven't gotten friendlier in cases where the boot menu shows up, whereas both Windows and macOS boot managers have much friendlier experiences to help users deal with the cases where it needs to be used.

Especially with increasingly boot loader menus being activated primarily in boot failure cases, it is a lot less jarring if we can present a nice view for the boot options.

[azenla]

I think this is absolutely possible! We can have a text based on and a graphical one available I think

[khaga87]

I've just come across this project and it does look very interesting.

From a presentation perspective, I would like to add accessibility as a consideration. There is the WCAG 2.2 aa (https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/) which is about best practices for accessibility needs on the web. I know this is a different use case (ie web is different to a bootloader) but it might give some pointers to things that are important for those with accessibility needs.

It would be great to think about this in the design phase rather than being an afterthought.

[azenla]

Hi @khaga87, the initial graphical boot menu is in main, I'll be looking at options for accessibility before release :)