On Fri, 1 Jan 1999 20:02:04 -0600, Bob Nestor wrote:
> 
> First, a question about the Xserver.  I've been running Ken's OSFA color 
> Xserver for some time now and was a little surprised that it, or 
> something similar, isn't the default for the 1.3.3 Release.  It took a 
> little digging before I realized my X startup problem was in trying to 
> start a B&W Xserver on a system booted for color.  Is there any 
> good/technical/political reason why we shouldn't be using Ken's OSFA 
> Xserver as the default for new installations?  It does seem to work for 
> all internal video and I believe it works for the SLOTMAN kernels too.

I can think of a couple of reasons:

1. Noone has stepped forward to assume the responsibility to maintain
Xmac68k.  Blame is mainly on me.

2. It uses non-standard ioctl() calls in order to do PseudoColor (need
color map operations), thus it requires a non-standard header file
just to compile.  I don't think it's appropriate for a standard
program to depend on something non-standard.

3. It has proven not to fit all systems as well as its name implies
(OSFA = One Server Fits All).  A number of people has had trouble
running it on their systems, whether it's a grf driver problem or a
server problem.  I'm not confident enough to make it our standard-
issue X server just yet ("alrighty then, when?" "well, I dunno").

However, a stripped-down version of OSFA server which does not support
8-bit PseudoColor but only Monochrome (B&W), 4/8-bit StaticGray and
16-bit TrueColor would eliminate Reason 2, and hopefully won't have as
much trouble on some systems as the full OSFA does (Reason 3).

Now, there remains only Reason 1...

Ken