jaap@sequent.UUCP (Jaap Vermeulen) (02/12/91)
ajk@wren.cs.rmit.OZ.AU (Alan Kent) 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 have been told a lot of X software tends to >go crazy with unusual numbers of bit plains (ie. not 1 or 8). Have >people noticed this with 2 bit planes? In particular I am interested >in whether MOTIF and XView make good use of the greyscales with their >3d look. I'm running the grayscale version. It behaves fine, is fast enough, no problems with motif applications. You can tweek it any way you want to using X resources. So far I only ran into one application that does not display in grayscale but choses black and white instead. If grayscale is worth its price, I don't know. Except that grayscale is easier on my eyes (I use lightgray as my background color), I don't see a lot of added benefit over B&W. (Highlight color is easier to spot :-). Why not try it yourself with a sinlge unit? -Jaap- -- Jaap Vermeulen +--------------------------+ | Sequent Computer Systems | Internet : jaap@sequent.com | Beaverton, Oregon | Uucp : ...uunet!sequent!jaap +--------------------------+
jbk@visual.UUCP (02/12/91)
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
prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) (02/13/91)
In article <4742@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> ajk@wren.cs.rmit.OZ.AU (Alan Kent) 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 have been told a lot of X software tends to >go crazy with unusual numbers of bit plains (ie. not 1 or 8). Have >people noticed this with 2 bit planes? I've only came across two pieces of software that requires me to turn the greyscale off. They are FrameMaker 1.3X and an older version of xloadimage (2.00, if my memory serves me right). I believe that the latest version of xloadimage as well as FrameMaker 2.1X works with two bitplanes. >In particular I am interested in whether MOTIF and XView make good use >of the greyscales with their 3d look. Yes. Having greyscale is definitely a plus for those applications, but they look reasonably good on b&w terminals as well. -- Robert Claeson Disclaimer: I represent myself and not my employer.