Dude, the manual is applicable because it IS covered in the manual. The docs tell you exactly how to set the default boot partition. I believe that's the main issue you're describing in your first post. Right?
I don't agree - as I did not find anything about the switching by TAB between GUI-view and Text-view in the manual; as mentioned in the small proposition for manual amendment:
Boot process: first you will see a GUI with an "apple-page". If you don't press any key at that moment, the preselected volume will continue booting and starting up. You can presss any key to come to the "volume chooser" where you can press left/right arrow to choose the volume to boot from, the down arrow (at a selected volume) for some given boot options, or [TAB] to switch to the boot prompt where you can again choose boot volume (by up/down arrows) and manually enter advanced startup options. [TAB] again switches back to the GUI.That's what SnowyWind had installed - and that is just an older version of chameleon; but that IS chameleon.
Btw: SnowyWindOSX is a ready-to-go-install-DVD with Mac OS X 10.6.2 directly adapted for MSI WIND U100 - just google for SnowyWindOSX.iso. (The real problems appear when trying to update to 10.6.7 ...)
Next (new) question from my side: what will happen if I install latest version of chameleon "over" that one - and I am asking about configuration files. Will the new installation overwrite the old preferences-file - or leave it as it was, and could that run into problems?
The docs posted by RockSteady also state, highlighted in red, in which version that option was added.
Yes - but am I blind or didn't I read there something about the GUI-/Text-mode?
As for your other issue, I'll take a wild guess that the reason why you can't see the command prompt at the bottom of the Chameleon GUI is because the font color used for the command prompt is the same as the background color. That's the only thing I can think of.
And that is the solution to it. It is not white on white, but white on light grey, and very small in the left corner at the bottom of the screen - and it is (obviously!) only appearing when you have choosen a mac-bootable volume, not with a pc-bootable volume!
Pressing TAB always works - but caution: the selection in the GUI-mode might be different than that one in the textmode. So if you select a mac-bootable volume in the GUI-mode and switch to text-mode, still the text-mode-volume-selector still stands on the default volume - but if you don't press any up/down arrow, the volume that was selected in GUI-mode will be booted. As soon as you press up/down arrorws, GUI-selection will be overrided.
I want to check all that with latest version, but first be sure that install over this version does not caus any problems - and whether I have to be careful about anything.
As far as I know there is no way to disable the command prompt, except maybe if you modify the source code. And doing that would be at least as stupid as not setting the font color to something else than white when you're using a theme with a white background.
That would be "special hacks" - that's another topic that goes beyond "normal use". So far, I did not change anything in the configuration/preference file - and I want to keep that as long as it makes sense (including that default volume is unbootable; that does not bother me for the moment).
Whatever the case may be, the only person to blame for it is the author of SnowyWind, it has nothing to do with Chameleon itself or its (lack of) documentation. I don't think we should have to add to the docs that users should avoid setting the font and the theme background to the same color.
As said: I want to update to latest version of chameleon - and the I can see hot that behaves - and if it behaves more or less as the version the guy from snowywind had installed.
what happens if I would start up windows and delete the c-partition totally - or if I would just reformat c-partition when starting again from external SnowyWind-DVD with HD-tool, but without reinstalling OS yet? do I run into a no-startup-problem-issue to even not be able to startup windows?
I have no freaking idea. I don't know anything about HD-tool or the SnowyWind DVD. This forum is the wrong place to ask this type of question, we cannot support third party OS X install DVDs, tools and utilities here.
Sorry, again: SnowyWind installs a (obviously older) version of chameleon as boot-manager - and that's the stuff here; not more and not less.
btw: I did erase the third partition (the entire mac partion) - and as expected, even not booting into Windows is possible as chameleon does lack of some information that is missing (and that resided on the mac volume).
Another source of confusion will be: what happens when I replace the second (unbootable) PC data partiotion with a smaller one and a second mac-(bootable) partition. where does chameleon epect to have residing it's configuration/preferences files - stil on the "third" partition (that will be mac formatted, but empty), or on the same partition as before (that is now no more third, but fourth partition)?
why do you write in the manual "Suppose that your installation is on ..."? ... As soon as the user does not have a standard installation, he might be confused.
We cannot possibly cover all imaginable, right or wrong ways to install Chameleon in the documentation. As I said earlier, the documentation assumes that the user has performed a manual installation of Chameleon - as described in the docs. We cannot provide documentation for setups or configurations put together by a third party, and we cannot take into account all possible mistakes that could be made by a third party.
And here comes the next problem: what happens when the user does not "intstall chameleon manually from scratch". Here I have the case that some old version was installed "automatically". When I update to the latest version: do I then have the same configuration as someone who has "manually installed"? I think explicitely to the switchability between GUI and text mode that it seems to me that you don't know that.
That said, it is well known that the documentation has its flaws. You are welcome to contribute and improve it as you see fit - that's how things work around here. If you do a nice writeup and the other moderators agree, I'll have it stickied along with the rest of the documentation.
I'll do that - but I first wanna install the latest version; does not make sense to write manual instructions for older versions.
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That said, it is well known that the documentation has its flaws. You are welcome to contribute and improve it as you see fit - that's how things work around here. If you do a nice writeup and the other moderators agree, I'll have it stickied along with the rest of the documentation.
Yep.. I'll second that.
I'll do that - but need to first install latest version.
We do need more details docs here. I'd previously thought of creating a PDF but as Chameleons' options keep growing, bugfixes worked on and it's codebase appended to for newer versions on OS X etc. I believe the best option would be to have a wiki which will allow many devs, users and contributors to keep it up to date. Maybe Zef can add a package to his server?
I do not consider the form of the instruction file as problem - but that there are several details not mentioned - and if you don't know, you don't come so far that your manual seems to be appropriate; as happened here ... As for me, I would say that the manual needs some more intro-parts that the user can orientate himself.
I've used Chameleon for a while now and I don't understand every option available, though that's mostly down to not having to use them.
sure, but that's not the problem. important is that you are not stuck before you get any orientation what and how ...
Voltaire. Thanks for posting your issues here. I understand your frustrations, but Gringo is right in saying that a lot of your problems look like they've been caused by SnowyWind (whatever that is), and hasn't helped by the lack of extended documentation here, though BTW, did SnowyWind have a manual?
I did not find a special manual there - I am just told that chameleon will be installed - and to look at "chameleon support" for that; and that's here ...
However, as Gringo has mentioned, if you do want to contribute to the docs in any way here then please do. All of us here help out when we can in our spare time and unfortunately for me at least, I haven't had much of it lately.
I'll do ... and I'll have a detailed eye on the "arrow behaviour" as some behaviour might be as expected to specialists, but not to the "less-hacking-approved" users.