Jared D. McNeill wrote:
> Hey folks.
>
> I've noticed on a few of my vesafb test machines that in 8bpp paletted
> mode, the console text colour is a very dark grey. It seems that this
> is because I use rasops_cmap to initialize an "ANSI colourmap", and
> the definition of ``white'' is as follows:
>
>         0xc7, 0xc7, 0xc7, /* white - XXX too dim? */
>
> If I override this value in vesafb to something higher, let's say {
> 0xdf, 0xdf, 0xdf }, then the text is actually readable. I've also
> heard reports of other users of rasops that have similar problems with
> the default text colour being too dim. In my experience though, not
> all VESA devices are nearly as dim.
>
> Is there any reason to not just bump the values in
> sys/dev/rasops/rasops.c:rasops_cmap? Or should hw drivers simply work
> around this? If the latter, a driver like vesafb would have no way of
> knowing as different VESA implementations appear to behave differently.
>
> [side note: FreeBSD's default text colour is a much brighter white,
> and it seems certainly reasonable to me (let the flames begin)]
>
> FYI, here's some examples of what I'm talking about (screenshots taken
> from VirtualPC).
>
> Default vesafb, 0xc7 for "white":
>  
> http://www.invisible.ca/~jmcneill/netbsd/rasops/NetBSD%20Picture%201.tiff
> Modified vesafb, 0xdf for "white":
>  
> http://www.invisible.ca/~jmcneill/netbsd/rasops/NetBSD%20Picture%202.tiff
> Reference vga:
>  
> http://www.invisible.ca/~jmcneill/netbsd/rasops/NetBSD%20Picture%203.tiff
>
> Keep in mind that this is not a VirtualPC-specific problem; I have
> seen the problem elsewhere.
>
> Cheers,
> Jared

It seems like it should probably default to the standard VGA colors,
because that's what folks are used to, I think.

I override the colors in my system to use black on white text anyway. :-)

    -- Garrett

-- 
Garrett D'Amore, Principal Software Engineer
Tadpole Computer / Computing Technologies Division,
General Dynamics C4 Systems
http://www.tadpolecomputer.com/
Phone: 951 325-2134  Fax: 951 325-2191