Very Computer

I have my  Xserver in 16 bit color mode.  I like seeing my jpegs that
way.  Unforuntately, I have a number of apps that complain and won't
function if the bpp is not 8.  These apps are applications running on
our other unix systems (commercial packages, the dealers won't support
anything but 8 bit).  I remember hearing something about a 'virtual X
server'  Something aboutrunning an X server inside of an X server.
Is there anyway Icould bring up a virtual 8 bit X server up inside of my
16 bit X server?

if so, how?  (where would I read to find info on such a thing?)

--
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yet)
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It's not how far you fall, but how high you bounce

Quote:> I have my  Xserver in 16 bit color mode.  I like seeing my jpegs that
> way.  Unforuntately, I have a number of apps that complain and won't
> function if the bpp is not 8.  These apps are applications running on
> our other unix systems (commercial packages, the dealers won't support
> anything but 8 bit).  I remember hearing something about a 'virtual X
> server'  Something aboutrunning an X server inside of an X server.
> Is there anyway Icould bring up a virtual 8 bit X server up inside of my
> 16 bit X server?

> if so, how?  (where would I read to find info on such a thing?)

jue

--
The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views
and do not reflect the official views of Microsoft Corporation

I was having a lot of trouble with this a while back. I wanted to be able to
run my X server in 16 bpp mode and still use 8 bpp X applications (IDL in
particular). I tried all sorts of things and wound up sending an email for
help to XFree86. They informed me that the limitation was not with the
X server (I had tried both XFree86 and MetroX) but with the PC hardware.

Some (all?) of the unix vendors have special additions to their video cards
to allow them to run both 16 bpp and 8 bpp simultaneously. If you run
'xdpyinfo' from inside one of your xterms, you will see all the possible
colour modes you are allowed. If you run at 8 bpp you will see lots
of different ones. If you run at 16 bpp (or 24 or 32) you will only see
a couple if you run under Linux. If you were to run the same test from
say an SGI or a Sun, you would see the 8 bpp visuals while running a
16 bpp Xserver.

So, the bottom line to your question, as much as I hated to hear it, is that
XFree86 will not and can not do what you want it to do. For that you need
to get a much more expensive computer like an SGI or a Sun :-(

Sorry,

-Jim

--

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Institute for Biodiagnostics           Fax:      (204) 984-5472
http://www.ibd.nrc.ca/~mansfield/

On Sun, 12 Jan 1997 11:28:24 -0800,

- Don

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: I have my  Xserver in 16 bit color mode.  I like seeing my jpegs that
: way.  Unforuntately, I have a number of apps that complain and won't
: function if the bpp is not 8.  These apps are applications running on
: our other unix systems (commercial packages, the dealers won't support
: anything but 8 bit).  I remember hearing something about a 'virtual X
: server'  Something aboutrunning an X server inside of an X server.
: Is there anyway Icould bring up a virtual 8 bit X server up inside of my
: 16 bit X server?

: if so, how?  (where would I read to find info on such a thing?)

The problem is with the PC video hardware - SVGA cards, apart from a few
high-end ones, will only allow a single colour depth to be displayed at
any one time. The solution I use for this problem is to run two X servers,
one at 8bpp and the other at 16bpp. These I start using

startx -- -bpp 16

and

startx -- -bpp 8 :1

On my system, VT7 becomes the 16bit server and VT8 runs the 8bit server. I can
swap between them using CTRL-ALT-F7 and CTRL-ALT-F8. This is, of course, quite
a memory hog though and I wouldn't really recommend soing this unless you've
got at least 24MB of RAM.

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