antiX gfxboot Configuration README ================================== Gfxboot is highly configurable. Some configuration changes require a recompile but very many changes can be made by editing the gfxboot.cfg file. In addition, the user can create up to 3 custom menus by making text files called options1.men, custom1.men, and custom2.men. The gfxboot.cfg File ==================== This file is laid out in sections. The sections are named like this: [base] The base section is processed first. Only sections that appear in the layout= line in the base section will be processed. They are read in the order they appear in that line. NOTE: Options are "first come, first served" so in order to override an existing setting your new setting must either be in an earlier section or come before (above) the setting you want to override. Lines starting with the characters ; or # will be ignored. You assigned menus to Fn function keys with lines like: key.F1=help You can assign more than 6 Fn keys but you are likely to run out of room if you do. gfxboot.cfg Settings -------------------- The majority of the settings affect colors and the position of elements on the screen. Most, but not all, colors can be adjusted. The term "panel" refers to the row of Fn Function keys near the bottom of the screen. You can move it around with panel.xoffset and panel.yoffset. You adjust the gap between Fn keys with panel.gap. The term "sbox" stands for "selection box". When enabled it draws a box around each selected menu item in the panel. Most of the gfxboot.cfg color options should be obvious. Here are is a brief description of some of the less obvious options that were added: timeout.fg The color of the timeout icon(s) timeout.leftside Move the timeout icons to the left of the selected main menu item timeout.copies Make this many timeout icons and cycle through each one successively timeout.gap The gap in pixels between multiple timeout icons timeout.revframes Run the timeout frames in reverse order timeout.test Don't erase timeout icons when they normally get erased. This makes it easier to take screen shots show the timeout icon(s). sbox.enabled Draw a bordered box around each selected item at the bottom of the screen menu.xoffset Move the pop-up menus and their selected items this many pixels to the *left*. panel.xoffset Move the entire panel this many pixels to the right panel.yoffset Move the entire panel this many pixels up panel.gap The gap between items in the panel main.rtl.xoff Offset the main menu for right-to-left languages Custom Menus ============ You can create 3 different custom menus using files named options1.men, custom1.men, and custom2.men. You would make corresponding Fn key assignments like this: key.F4=options1 key.F5=custom1 key.F6=custom2 Custom Menu file Format ----------------------- The file format for .men files is straightforward. The first line is the title. The following lines are the label followed by optional spaces (not tabs) a back-tick character (`) and then the boot parameters associated with the label. Custom Desktop Menu ------------------- TL;DR: don't use it The Desktop menu can be customized by using a desktop.men file. The format is slightly different. There is no title line, just menu entries. The title is always "Desktop" (or a translations thereof). The last menu entry for a command line interface will be added automatically. You can set a new/different default desktop by putting its name in a file called: desktop This will add a new entry at the top of the Desktop menu. The label will be whatever is set by this parameter and the parameter will be the empty string. The parameter string for the first entry in the desktop.men file will now be used because it is no longer the default. If there is an entry in the desktop file with a label that matches the default.desktop, it will be ignored. Finally, the desktop.men file may get overwritten when you run the update-default-desktop program. Therefore we suggest that you don't use desktop.men as a 4th custom menu and just make use of the 3 other menus that you can customize. Predefined Function Keys ======================== Three of the Fn function keys were preassigned: F10 Power-off/Reboot F11 Toggle sbox enabled F12 Show boot parameters Enabling the F7 Save Menu ========================= If a file called enable.save exists and is not empty then if the F7 menu does not exist or if it is set to "dpi" then it is replaced by the "F7 Save" menu. The purpose of this feature is to allow us to enable the "F7 Save" menu only on Live systems on read-write media. Default Menu settings ===================== The default entry for most of our menus can be selection with a .def file. The file must contain the parameters of the default entry in the correct order and with the correct spacing. This format is convenient for setting the defaults to the current menu choices since the only information we have to go on is the list of all the boot parameters. For historical reasons there are two exceptions to this rule. Both the language and the timezone must have the leading "=" stripped off. So you would use "fr" not "lang=fr" and you would use "America/Denver" not "tz=American/Denver".