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 :-)

> 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. 

How strange!

> Is this a bad idea? is there any simple way to invert everything? when I
> boot 16bpp the console is white on black, at 8bpp and below it's black on
> white. but X comes up the wrong width in 16bpp.
> any thoughts?

I don't know of any good way to invert the console itself, although I
suppose it wouldn't be all that hard to find the appropriate code in the
kernel and muck with it.  If you want inverse video on a console-like
screen, try 'dt'.  It has a compile-time option to do inverse video.  Keep
in mind that it can only handle 1-bit video at the moment, tho.

Btw, the reason that the console is white on black at higher bit depths is
that white maps to 0 at higher depths, black does so at lower depths (or
at least I think it's something like that :-)

I hope this helps.

Later.

-- 
Colin Wood                                 cwood@ichips.intel.com
Component Design Engineer - MD6                 Intel Corporation
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I speak only on my own behalf, not for my employer.