Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!dana From: dana@dino.bellcore.com (Dana A. Chee) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: Multiple screens and multiple visuals Message-ID: Date: 24 Aug 88 12:31:29 GMT References: <13562@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <8808231403.AA22734@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU> Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com Organization: Bellcore, Morristown, NJ USA Lines: 46 In-reply-to: jim@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU's message of 23 Aug 88 14:03:13 GMT In article <8808231403.AA22734@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU> jim@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jim Fulton) writes: The particular instance that Bob was talking about was the sample server for color Sun displays that have the extra overlay plane. For those who haven't seen one in action, the current implementation provides two separate X screens on the same display tube (Zaphod mode) which toggle back and forth whenever the mouse moves off the edge of the root window. Instead of having these two separate screens, it would be much nicer to have both visuals available on one screen (if people like the extra real estate, they should use a window manager that provides rooms). This would allow monochrome applications to use the faster StaticGray visual and color applications to use a PseudoColor visual. I'm not sure how well this would work on the Sun, since Zaphod mode uses two different frame buffers (the monochrome screen appears whenever the color frame buffer is disabled -- maybe you could disable only part of the color frame buffer to allow some of the monochrome to show through). But anyway, this doesn't fix the problem. How do you specify resources for a given visual type? And how do you tell the application that you wish to use a certain type (for example, if Zaphod mode was implemented with visuals instead of screens, I would like my clock to run on a PseudoColor visual, but my emacs to run on StaticGray for speed)? Will this require new command line arguments? One reason why we're interested in doing this is to see how many applications will break because they simply use the default visual instead of looking at what's available and choosing the correct one. Unfortunately, the answer is probably "a lot of them." The relevant routines in Xlib are XGetVisualInfo and XMatchVisualInfo, although I would expect various toolkits to provide alternative interfaces. Lots will break, since there's no way to tell an application what you want (most applications will run on any type) Jim Fulton MIT X Consortium -- +*************************************************************************+ * Dana Chee (201) 829-4488 * * Bellcore * * Room 2Q-250 * * 445 South Street ARPA: dana@bellcore.com * * Morristown, NJ 07960-1910 UUCP: {gateways}!bellcore!dana * +*************************************************************************+