Re: Video display question.
On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 04:36:42PM +0000, Brent McMillan wrote:
> I've been playing around with my xf86config and my window manager
> (afterstep) for a while trying to get images to appear as nice as when I
> view them in Windows. I have a ATI Rage IIc AGP with 8 Mb of RAM and I
> run X windows at 24 bpp and a resolution of 1024x768. My problem is
> that Netscape has trouble "allocating a colour map entry for the
> background" and jpegs and such all appear grainy no matter what program
> I use to view them with. I've limited my wharf to 5 colour unintensive
> icons, since any more would not appear when the wharf was started.
> Also, I just have a plain blue background for my root window.
>
> Can anyone tell me what needs to be done so that I can get more colours
> on my screen? Thanks in advance
>
> Brent McMillan
Video drivers can handle a finite number of colors. What happens when
you run out?
Under MS-Windows, when the color map is becoming exhausted the allocation
of colors is re-done so that a new best-approximation is achieved.
This forces a re-draw by all apps.
Under X-Windows, when the color map is exhausted you are out of luck -
an app that is starting must make do with what is left. This makes
some sense in a networked situation where the X "server" may very well
be presenting screens from multiple "client" machines.
Netscape is a pig about using up the colors.
Options:
- start Netscape with its own color map (-install switch), which allows
all apps to get color map slots, but causes odd flashing as you move
the context from app to app (because the color map switches too)
- limit Netscape to a smaller number of colors (-ncols switch) if the
problem is with other app displays (but it sounds like you want to allow
Netscape to have a max number of color map slots for jpeg display)
- run with a greater color depth (if your video can do this)
See http://bul.eecs.umich.edu/~crowej/sunfaq/ColormapFAQ.html (just a
FAQ that popped up on a google.com search).
- MikeT
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