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From: wiml@milton.u.washington.edu (William Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: color NeXTstation (and Weight of Monitor!)
Summary: Static color. Yum.
Keywords: color NeXTstation 16 bit
Message-ID: <8072@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 25 Sep 90 03:19:08 GMT
References: <5582@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <1990Sep24.053046.5143@wrl.dec.com> <444@news.nd.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 22

In article <444@news.nd.edu> flynn@cse.nd.edu (Patrick J. Flynn) writes:
>I attended *two* presentations before roll-out and was UNABLE to get a
>straight answer to the question: `Does the 16-bit color system have a
>12-bit, WRITABLE color map, or are there only 4 bits of intensity on
>each gun?' ...
>I'd rather have an *8*-bit color map than a 12-bit static color
>palette.

Well, my understanding is that there are only 4 bits per gun. Dithered,
no doubt. This seems sort of restrictive until you think about the
trouble you'd have coordinating color palettes across umpteen different
color windows, each with possibly completely non-overlapping palettes,
with new drawing going on all the time and realtime video thrown in to
boot. Look up palettes are a nice optimization but only if you know
ahead of time what's going to be on the screen -- which, in a
multi-window multi-process environment like a NeXT, you don't.

-- 
 wiml@milton.acs.washington.edu       Seattle, Washington   
     (William Lewis)   |  47 41' 15" N   122 42' 58" W  
"These 2 cents will cost the net thousands upon thousands of 
dollars to send everywhere. Are you sure you want to do this?"