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

If you have a recent Sun box, it is likely to come with fancy 24-bit video cards with names like `ffb' (fast frame buffer). However, the default visual is only 8-bit. This is a decision by Sun (mistaken, in my opinion) to improve backward compatibility with old apps. A system administrator can change the default visual by copying /usr/dt/config/Xservers to /etc/dt/config and hacking it to add under-documented flags like -defdepth 24. Few system administrators will be able to figure this out. An application running in this kind of environment should be able to recognize that the display is truly 24-bit and create 24-bit windows. For example, recent netscape's do this properly. xwininfo on a netscape window: Depth: 24 Visual Class: TrueColor xwininfo on a xemacs window: Depth: 8 Visual Class: PseudoColor As a result, display of images in XEmacs is noticeably suboptimal. How do we fix this? Martin