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From: keinert@IASTATE.EDU (Keinert Fritz)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Color background for X-windows
Message-ID: <1991Mar20.123910@IASTATE.EDU>
Date: 20 Mar 91 18:39:10 GMT
References: <1991Mar20.163036.28305@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Sender: news@news.iastate.edu (USENET News System)
Reply-To: keinert@IASTATE.EDU (Keinert Fritz)
Organization: Iowa State University
Lines: 23

> Is X11R4 able to display color bitmaps in the xsetroot commmand?
> or any other way to display color bitmaps in the background?

The xsetroot command can only handle bitmaps (2 colors), but it is
possible to have color backgrounds. I use 
	xloadimage -onroot picturefile
where picturefile can be in various formats (gif, sun raster file, ...)

Note, however, that there is a root color map with 256 entries, and that has
to be enough for the background and all colors used in windows that
don't have their own color maps. I would not use pictures with more than
200 colors, to leave some for other things.

Also, the window managers I have tried (mwm and twm) do not recycle colors.
If you have a background with 150 colors, and you try to replace it with
one with 120 colors, this will not work. Basically, you get one fancy color
picture per login.

Fritz Keinert                      keinert@vincent.iastate.edu
Dept. of Mathematics               keinert@pollux.math.iastate.edu
Iowa State University              s1fxk@ccvax.iastate.edu
Ames, IA 50011			   s1.fxk@isumvs.bitnet
Tel: (515) 294-5128