[aklug] Re: Using X11

On Mon, 13 Apr 2009, Thomison, Lee wrote:

> I've poked and prodded at this for a couple of years now. It seems that th=
> e old app wants 256 colors, and gets cranky if mydesktop is different. Goo=
> gling yields the valuable information that (summarized) 'some old or poorly=
> behaved applications may expect 16 or 256 colors'. The usual suggestion o=
> n how to handle this is to not write the application to do that in the firs=
> t place. =20
>
> The phrase 'private colormap' comes up sometimes, but there's no real layma=
> n explanation of what to do with those or how to set them up. Closest I've=
> seen was a lot of C code, which starts to look like way more trouble than =
> I want to go to.
>
> So, to summarize, to all you really smart and experienced folk out there, i=
> s there an easy way to get past this 256 color allocation issue? Or is the=
> 'easy' way to wait until this system is junked and the new system is spec'=
> ed and installed?

Ah, the good old days, before we could afford frame buffers with lots of
colors, eh? Compliant apps should support an Xresource setting that you
could set in .Xdefaults:

   foo*privatecolormap: true

Replace foo with your app's X resource name, of course. Hopefully your
application supports at least that. If not, it gets a whole lot more
complicated...

         --Arthur Corliss
           Live Free or Die
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Received on Mon Apr 13 10:01:37 2009