Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] Embed QEmu screen on a custom window

[Oliver Gerlich]

Christian MICHON wrote:
> ok, maybe this needs clarifications. I do not have a Mac, therefore anything
> related to cocoa is unknow to me. sorry :(
>
> Let's take an instance of i386-softmmu qemu, which has switched internally
> into a 1024x768 graphical mode. To have any gui toolkit AROUND it, the
> whole apps, inclusive of the window manager decoration, would need more
> than 1024x768 pixels.
>
> When going full screen, as if the qemu machine was the host, we should see
> 1024x768 pixels only on the screen. The gui toolkit would not be
> drawn, therefore
> useless unless you switch back to non-fullscreen.
>
> Having the gui toolkit around the instance is ok, provided your native screen
> resolution is big enough. But if it's not, you'll need scrollbars, or reduce the
> internal graphical mode.
>
> Let's take another concrete example. I have on my desktop a PC with XP
> and a LCD 15 inches which support at most 1024x768. When I launch a qemu
> instance and the internal softmmu graphical mode is 800x600, how much space
> is left on screen, considering the taskbar at the botton and the qemu titlebar ?
>
> 100 pixels in height and 200 pixels in x. Not much to integrate a gtk2 toolbars
> and a menu, right ? Actually, it will be just nice. only for 800x600
> qemu graphic
> mode.
>
> My point is: what it the controls could be drawn inside the qemu
> graphic windows,
> like an On-Screen-Display. You would call a menu, overlapping the
> current session,
> and you could select the controls you want to change (mostly fda and cdrom, or
> load/save vm). The advantage of this being inside the main graphic
> window is that
> even inside a full-screen mode, we could access it.
>
> But I understand Fabrice's point. After all, this is his "baby". :)
> Christian
>
>
>
>
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Coming to think of it, I happen to like the idea of an OSD :) . Although 
I use Qemu mostly in windowed mode with 1024x786 on a 1280x1024 screen 
(windowed mode is nice for having Visual Studio in Qemu and Mozilla 
Browser with MSDN under Linux), there are situations where fullscreen 
mode is better. And in these cases a little OSD would be nice, with 
buttons to change CDs, suspend the guest, stop the guest, and maybe 
seeing the current guest CPU load and guest HDD activity. Maybe the OSD 
should be similar to the little top bar in Windows Terminal Server 
connections (IIRC it makes it possible to get out of from fullscreen mode).
As such, an OSD in addition to the GUI would be really useful I think.

Just my two cents,
Oliver Gerlich