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From: jbk@visual.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: 2 bit grayscale, Visual - is it worth it?
Message-ID: <9102121430.AA02763@mchale.visual.uu.net>
Date: 12 Feb 91 14:30:01 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 27


Dr Alan Kent (uunet!wren.cs.rmit.oz.au!ajk) writes:

> We have a number of Visual XTurbo19 X-terminals. Aparantly there is a
> greyscale option for them. Has anyone tried them? Any feedback about
> reliability, speed etc?

    I'll leave it to the folks on the net to provide a truly unbiased view of
the X19 Turbo grayscale machine, but, as one of its developers, I can give
you some feedback.  The X19 Turbo has hardware assist for both monochrome
and grayscale graphics drawing.  Without detailing the hardware design,
under most circumstances 2-plane (gray) pixels can be written in about the
same amount of time as 1-plane (monochrome) pixels.  Speaking from experience,
engineering dedicated a large amount of time to exploiting the graphics
assist and devising efficient grayscale algorithms for optimal performance.

> I am interested in whether MOTIF and XView make good use of the greyscales
> with their 3d look.

    My turbo is my main development machine.  I use MOTIF and like its 3-D
use of gray shades, and find the grayscale turbo to be a pleasant development
and testing machine.

Jeff Krampf
Visual Technology
jbk@visual.uu.net
1-800-VISUALC