On 30-Aug-07, at 8:55 AM, Andreas Raab wrote:
tim Rowledge wrote:
A splash screen should be configurable in some way. Ideally it ought to be generated by the image! The *real* problem here is the whole " if the time to show something interesting is a couple of seconds" part. There really isn't much of an excuse for such a delay.
You mean loading the image and relocating pointers is no excuse? Running the startup code, redrawing the screen? No excuses either?
It's a *reason* but not an *excuse*. Yes, there is a load of assorted stuff done as the VM starts up and loads the image (which could take several seconds on some machine/setups) and then as the image starts up. That's the reason(s). The excuse really adds up to "we haven't bothered to improve things". As John mentioned, it seems likely that some of the VM related memory scanning could be improved. Looking at the fairly intimidating list of things done as part of the image startup I feel sure we could do a lot better - not least by having a smaller simpler better thought out image in the first place.
Even a basic image takes about a second to start (the delay between launching it and seeing something is noticeable); if you actually do anything when you start the image or if you simply have larger images it easily takes longer.
I don't think it would be appropriate to have a window of any sort display when you are starting a Seaside server for example. Or running on an IBM 3090. Or a signet ring.
And which part of "optional" splash screen is so hard to understand? Remove splash.bmp and it's gone.
Cheers,
- Andreas
tim -- tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Any program that runs right is obsolete.