VanLUG Email Archive
bbarnett@L8R.net
Tue, 19 Jan 1999 14:14:28 -0800 (PST)
On 19-Jan-99 Curt Sampson wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Jan 1999 bbarnett@L8R.net wrote:
>
>> I must interject here, and mention that multiple screen sizes, with
>> multiple
>> depths, is not a new thing. You CAN change and/or add a screen of different
>> depth, without effecting current applications.. the api just has to be set
>> up
>> to handle this.
>
> Correct. Setting up applications to handle this is not trivial.
>
>> Let me put it another way. If the amiga, a 12 year old os can do it, then
>> linux can do it.
>
> This is nothing to do with Linux; it's entirely an X11 issue.
>
> The real question you have to ask yourself is, `is it worth changing
> X11 to do this?' Applications developers have only so much time on
> their hands; do we really want them to spend time teaching their
> applications how to deal with a sudden colour change rather than
> working on new features, or stability, or whatever?
>
> Windows probably has a colour model that's different to X11's, and
> makes this sort of thing easier, but other things harder. One of
> the things you'll notice missing in Windows is private colourmaps:
> if a screen has only 256 colours available, and two applications
> each need 200 colours that are different from those in the other
> application, X11 can assign each a private colourmap and deal with
> it. (The application with the focus will have correct colours; the
> other will be more or less random.) Is this something you'd give
> up in X11 to have dynamic changing of the server's colour depth?
>
> cjs
> --
Well, I guess my biggest concern is games. Right now, I have absolutely no
reason to reboot my system, and it stays up for weeks on end, but occasionally
I want to play a game. As linux becomes more mainstream, I expect to see more
games for it, and probably something (hopefully much better than ;) directx for
linux, to give a standard for game manufactures to access 3d cards. This being
the case, we will want to be able to play games that use 8 bit screens, on 16
or 24 bit X11 screens, something that wine with directx emulation can't do.
Anyhow, like I said, if it can be done as things stand, sure. Once thing is
certain though, linux can only take over so much of the market, without
stronger support for 3d cards, and games... and where the games go, the main
market goes.
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