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
