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From: korpela@stew.ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J. Korpela)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Graphics on the STE - v. generally speaking...
Message-ID: <1991Apr4.004349.123@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 4 Apr 91 00:43:49 GMT
References: <1991Apr3.004047.511@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> <1991Apr3.055519.2322@ns.network.com> <1991Apr3.223921.16258@jato.jpl.nasa.gov>
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In article <1991Apr3.223921.16258@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> hyc@hanauma.jpl.nasa.gov (Howard Chu) writes:
>                                                        This is what
>you get on a PC with VGA, 3 bits for one color, 3 bits for another,
>and 2 bits for the last. I don't recall what the 2-bit color on VGA is.
>At any rate, it covers the full spectrum; there are no color gaps or
>missing or overemphasized colors in this scheme.

Are you sure this is how things are done on the VGA?  I though that
VGA has a palette of 256 colors out of 32K total.  In that case the
number of bits assigned to each color is really up to the programmer.
32K total colors is 15 bits which turns into 5 bits each of R, G, and 
B.  By appropriate palette choices a programmer could choose to have
5 bits of R and 3 bits of B represented in the byte allocated to each
pixel (if he/she so desires.)  Because each palette lookup table entry
is independent I would think that it would be possible to use 2.67 bits
per color rather than the 3,3,2 method you describe. (I, of course, don't
mean that literally, but it should be possible to obtain a more even 
distribution across the spectrum than is possible with the 3,3,2 method).
Then again, I don't know all that much about VGA graphics, so I may
be wrong about this.

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