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From: gwe@cbnews.att.com (George W. Erhart)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms.programmer
Subject: Managing Colors
Keywords: Color, Pallet
Message-ID: <1990Nov26.130804.3496@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 26 Nov 90 13:08:04 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 21

(First let me state that I do not have the SDK, but that is another story)

I recently upgraded my machine to a 256 color capable video card. (Paradise 
1024) I noticed as I was displaying 256 GIF files using wingif, that each
GIF I loaded changed the overall color map. This has a rather anti-social
effect on other applications that might have their own idea of what the
color map should look like. 

The X window system handles this problem by managing the color map through
the server. If all requests for colors are less than the number of free color
cells in the color map, then there will be no conflicts between applications. 
If an application wants more colors than are currently available, the server
will install a separate color map for that applications window. When the input
focus (current window) moves into and out of that window, the server will flip
between the  overall color map and that window's color map. 

This is one area where windows appears to be quite backward ... any comments?
-- 
George Erhart
AT&T Bell Laboratories
att!archie!gwe