Subject: Re: Xsun select visual?
To: None <port-sparc@netbsd.org>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: port-sparc
Date: 10/06/2002 20:36:33
> If I fire up X on my SS20 (has a cgsix) running NetBSD-1.6, xdpyinfo
> ouput includes:

>   visual:
>     visual id:    0x26
>     class:    TrueColor
>     depth:    8 planes
>     available colormap entries:    8 per subfield
>     red, green, blue masks:    0x7, 0x38, 0xc0
>     significant bits in color specification:    8 bits

> I'd like to see if TrueColor makes it possible to look at pictures
> without shocking grain and colorization.

I find that it does, provided you have a display program that's willing
to dither them for you.  (Without dithering, the coarse colour
quantization produces severe posterization artifcts.)  The quality of
picture you get from dithered TrueColor doesn't begin to approach what
you can get with an intelligently-chosen set of colors for PseudoColor,
but has no problem with colormap flashing in the presence of multiple
pictures.

> But none of the man pages I've looked at and not even "strings Xsun"
> give a clue as to how to do so.

It's a client-side issue; you need a picture display client that's
willing to use the TrueColor visual.

Of course, it's best to have a client that will let you tell it what
visual to use.  Absent that, it might work to use -cc 4 when running
the server, to make the TrueColor visual the default; this will make
most clients use the TrueColor visual by default.  (See <X11/X.h> for
the magic numbers; search for TrueColor.)

I can't recommend any of the widely-distributed programs as allowing
you to specify what visual to use - not because they don't permit it,
but because I don't know anything about them, including whether they
permit it.  When I do picture display, I use my own client.  (As with
approximately all my code, I'll be happy to send a copy to anyone who
wants one.)

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