Path: utzoo!censor!geac!jtsv16!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!bloom-beacon!OSF.OSF.ORG!vania
From: vania@OSF.OSF.ORG (Vania Joloboff)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: MOTIF: color vs b&w
Message-ID: <8908041455.AA27244@osf.osf.org>
Date: 4 Aug 89 14:55:10 GMT
References: <180@sunquest.UUCP>
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 23


Are you talking of a monochrome or gray scale screen ?  3D effects
need 4 different tones (colors).  On a color screen it is easily
achieved.  Gray scale is less flashy but is pretty effective
-- see Next, Bull workstations, etc.

Moreover, MOTIF window manager is more effective with 8 colors: 3 for
borders of window that do not have focus 3 for the focus-sed window,
so that you know immediately which one it is, and 2 for background and
foreground.  You do not really need those, you can manage with 4
distinct tones, but it looks better with 8.  On monochrome screen, you
must emulate the gray scales by halftoning, using pixmaps. The
effectiveness of the 3D look depends mostly on:

1) the artist who designed your pixmap patterns.
2) the software engineer who put the appropriate patterns into your Xdefault
3) your screen resolution. The same halftone pattern
may have different effect according to pixel shape and size.

So, it is not true that OSF/MOTIF is "pretty poor in black and white"
but it is true that the effect needs fine tuning to be achieved.

Vania