Rotate palette (or otherwise redefine colors) in X
The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to comp.windows.x as well.
Hello debian-user and comp.windows.x
I wrote the below post on comp.unix.programmer and they
recommended I ask you. I include all what was said (not
just what I said) in the hope that will help.
Thanks.
Subject: Rotate palette (or otherwise redefine colors)
in X
>> Is this possible to do? I mean in a generic way, so
>> that every application and so on will work the same
>> only, for example, when they think they output red,
>> what you see is blue? I actually need this, it is not
>> for some cool stunt, if that makes a difference.
>
> (Say why you need it, instead of giving one of the
> non-reasons ...)
OK, long story short (?). I have eye problems, so I
stopped using GNOME and X and the like many years ago,
exclusively using Emacs in a Linux VT (and a projector,
and sunglasses...) - as you know with Emacs, everything
is so easy to configure - so while it sucks to be a
computer person with this problem, for a while now, it
is nothing that bothers me.
If it looks like this, I'm fine:
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/emacs_vt.png
However, sometimes I have to do stuff for school that
aren't text-only. Now I must use a Java application. I
installed a theme, that was supposedly bright-on-black,
but as you see in this dump -
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/black_uppaal.png
- while the menus, buttons, etc. are dark, the work
area is still painfully white.
I believe you can do that using a compositing manager.
It's not really ontopic for this group
[comp.unix.programmer], but there's rgb.txt
(/etc/X11/rgb.txt on my system) which you can edit and
either the server or client side will obey. I suspect
only some old-school X11 applications care though.
For questions about X, you might try comp.windows.x
FWIW, I can't find a comp.windows.x.gnome group, but
(peripherally) the comp.windows.x.kde group might have
a clue.
The next step would be, I guess, to use a modified X
server, or possibly a proxy X11 server which modifies
any colors it passes through.
This file is only used to parse colors that are
designated with an English word, it will have no effect
on colors that are either written as a RGB triplet,
hardcoded as numbers in the program code or computed on
the fly.
It can be done with the composite extension.
Like all X11 extensions, documentation is scarce and
appears and disappears randomly. You can try reading
the man page for XCompositeRedirectWindow. I never had
time going beyond reading a proof-of-concept program.
I was thinking of packages like 'xnest', but I admit I
have little experience with tweaking X11 or doing
unusual things with it.
>> If you were running Debian or related, you could
>> have asked on the debian-user mailing list. I
>> suppose there are X11 mailing lists too ... There
>> are X11-related Usenet groups, but I don't think
>> they are very active (although I may be wrong).
>
> Well, I *am* on Debian, but isn't X the same X
> everywhere? Don't they use it even on BSD and the
> like?
It is, and they do. debian-user just happens to be a
rather friendly place if you're running Debian and
trying to solve an interesting problem using it. And
some of the people there should be rather familiar with
the set of X11 utilities which is packaged as part of
Debian.
--
Emanuel Berg, programmer-for-rent. CV, projects, etc at uXu
underground experts united: http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
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