Re: 8-bit vs. 24-bit on new Sun hardware.

Martin Buchholz writes: Martin> However, the default visual is only 8-bit. This is a decision by Sun Martin> (mistaken, in my opinion) to improve backward compatibility with old Martin> apps. How mistaken indeed. It has always surprised me to find apps running properly under PseudoColor displays and not under TrueColor ones. Martin> A system administrator can change the default visual by copying Martin> /usr/dt/config/Xservers to /etc/dt/config and hacking it to add Martin> under-documented flags like -defdepth 24. Few system administrators Martin> will be able to figure this out. You can also launch directly your Xserver with options changing the default depth. When running a Creator3D machine, I've been using this for several years now (the dev option is needed if you want to mess up with the rest): | openwin -dev /dev/fb defclass TrueColor defdepth 24 Martin> An application running in this kind of environment should be able to Martin> recognize that the display is truly 24-bit and create 24-bit windows. Martin> For example, recent netscape's do this properly. Martin> xwininfo on a netscape window: Depth: 24 Visual Class: TrueColor Martin> xwininfo on a xemacs window: Depth: 8 Visual Class: PseudoColor I don't quite understand what you mean here. If you're running under a TrueColor 24 visual BY DEFAULT and don't mess up with it (neither with the colormap), you simply get windows of the same visual. Here, your X server was probably not launched with TrueColor24 by default, and I wouldn't be surprised that netscape comes with the --install option (and a private colormap). If you're telling us that /regardless/ of the default visual, XEmacs should use the best one by default, I strongly disagree. For instance, if you have PseudoColor8 by default and force XEmacs to use TrueColor24, you'll get colormap flashing because it needs a different one (remeber there's a strong relation between the visual you choose and the colormaps you can use) and user scream :-) On the other hand, you can use the -visual option to change the default visual. BTW, I'd be curious to see if XEmacs is clever enough, when given the -visual option, to figure out whether he needs a private colormap too... -- / / _ _ Didier Verna http://www.inf.enst.fr/~verna/ - / / - / / /_/ / E.N.S.T. INF C201.1 mailto:verna＠inf.enst.fr /_/ / /_/ / /__ / 46 rue Barrault Tel. (33) 01 45 81 73 46 75634 Paris cedex 13 Fax. (33) 01 45 81 31 19