Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU!mouse
From: mouse@LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  problem with colormaps.
Message-ID: <8911180632.AA11418@Larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 18 Nov 89 06:32:23 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 47

> I am running X11R3 on a sun3/60 usin awm.

> I have been fighting with a colormap problem for about a week. This
> is a program which [uses color, but isn't seeing colors on the
> screen].

Your problem is that you're being a good client.

Now that I have your attention....

You are doing the correct thing and calling XSetWindowColormap.
However, awm is not being a good window manager; it's ignoring the
window colormaps [%].  If you had done the wrong thing and called
XInstallColormap directly, it would have worked for you (in that you
would have seen your colors on the screen - I hesitate to imply that
doing this would make it completely working, because it would be
non-colormap-compliant in the ICCCM sense).

[%] I feel sure of this because I tried it here and it did this.

You have only a few choices.  Here are the ones that come to mind.

1) Switch to a colormap-compliant window manager.
2) Call XInstallColormap yourself and accept that this is not correct
   and will not work right when you eventually do use a compliant
   window manager (or someone else runs your program under one).
3) Allocate the colors out of the default colormap.
4) Put up with getting the wrong colors.

I assume we can ignore option 4.  Option 1 is the best solution, but
presumably you use awm because either there's no choice or you like it,
and in either case switching is undesirable.  Option 3 is reasonable if
you don't need very many colors, but from your description of the
program you need lots.  Option 2 is acceptable, particularly if you put
it under the control of something user-configurable (command-line
option, resource database flag, something like that) and make the
default be the compliant behavior (what you have now).

I've chosen a mix of 1 and 2.  I made my window manager handle window
colormaps properly, but I've also added an option to the program I had
which turned up this problem to make it install the map itself, for
others' use.

					der Mouse

			old: mcgill-vision!mouse
			new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu