Hi,

>Ethan Gold wrote:
>>Colin's message seems to suggest this shouldn't work, but...
>>I downloaded the color Xserver and it runs. problem is this:
>>at anything but 8bpp the aspect ratio is wrong. twice as wide at 4bpp,
>>half as wide at 16bpp.
>>not a big deal, I can live with 8bpp.
>Good, the color X-server doesn't really support color in anything but
>8-bit (or rather, it might be the kernel support that's lacking).  I'm
>rather surprised you could even get X to start in 16-bit mode.  I'm sorry
>if this isn't stated explicitly anywhere.  I guess I'll have to track it
>down and add a note :-)

I've noticed this as well (Quadra 650, internal video). In 2-bit mode, the
screen even gets 4 times as wide as it should be, with 3/4 of the bits not
set. Not particularly useful, though.
The same can be done with dt, btw., by taking out the "exit if not b/w"
code. 2-bit gets half as wide, 4-bit get 1/4 as wide, etc.

>>the main problem is that the colormap is inverted. I tried running thru the
>>different visuals, 0-4, with varying results. visual 4 (-cc 4) gave what
>>looks
>>like straight inversion whereas other visuals do weird yellowscales and
>>stuff.

The Xserver (Xmacbsd.960512) supports 6 visuals, and some can indeed be used
quite well. It does require the "old" X distribution, it does not work with
the new 1.2G X distribution that Scott Reynolds prepared. It would be nice,
of course, to have the patches for the above X server included in the 1.2G
server. Could the 1.2G sources be made available somehow?

The "inverted" color scale suggests that one might try using an inverted
color library (rgb.txt and rgb.db), thus letting the X server use 0,0,0 for
white, 255,255,255 for black, etc. Does anybody know how to transform the
rgb.txt into an rgb.db?

Best wishes,

          Nico

--
  Dr. N.J.R. van Eikema Hommes     Computer-Chemie-Centrum
  hommes@ccc.uni-erlangen.de       Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg
  Phone:    +49-(0)9131-856532     Naegelsbachstr. 25
  FAX:      +49-(0)9131-856566     D-91052 Erlangen, Germany