barnes@cs.nps.navy.mil (Patrick Barnes ) (08/21/90)
We are running X11/R3 on a Sun3/60 with a color monitor. We can run X in color mode by starting with 'xinit -- -dev /dev/cgfour'. The default appears to be black and white. We have observed the documented (XSun man page) two screen problem (feature) where moving the cursor off the left or right edge of the workspace reveals a new (blank) screen. We have two requests: (1) can we either make use of this hidden screen, doubling our workspace (I understand one is color, the other is black and white), or can we prevent the wrap effect which is very disconcerting for the user whose display goes blank every time his curser slips off the edge. (2) How can we tell xdm we want to use color mode. xdm does not recognize the '--' notation understood by xinit, nor a -dev option. Also, we would like to be able to switch between color/bw between sessions rather than have to kill xdm first. Since the color implementation is so slow as to be unusable under most circumstances, we only want to go into color mode to experiment with certain research problems. A related question is, will these problems all go away with R4. We are currently upgrading to R4 and are under the impression that color under R4 does not have R3's serious performance problems. Pat Barnes
mouse@LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU (08/21/90)
> We are running X11/R3 on a Sun3/60 with a color monitor. We can run > X in color mode by starting with 'xinit -- -dev /dev/cgfour'. The > default appears to be black and white. Yes, in R3 the default was to come up on the 1-bit screen because color was unusably slow. > We have two requests: (1) can we either make use of this hidden > screen, doubling our workspace (I understand one is color, the other > is black and white), Yes. The "other" screen is simply screen 1 on your display. To point something at that screen, you can typically use -display :0.1 (if your DISPLAY environment variable is something more complicated, replace the piece after the colon with :<n>.1, where <n> is the first number after the colon now). > or can we prevent the wrap effect which is very disconcerting for the > user whose display goes blank every time his curser slips off the > edge. I don't think R3 provided a way to do this. R4 has a -zaphod option which does what you want. (Why "zaphod"? From Zaphod Beeblebrox, a character in _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ who had two heads. A server running like this is said to be "multi-headed".) If you use -zaphod in R4, the second screen is still there; you just have to use some other means to get the mouse onto it in order to see it. (I have two programs which can serve, if anyone wants.) > (2) How can we tell xdm we want to use color mode. (Is this a question or a statement?) I know nothing about the R3 xdm, except that it is presumably something like the R4 xdm. The R4 xdm allows you to tell it what to run as the server; this can be a shell script that runs the real server binary with the required extra argument(s). > Also, we would like to be able to switch between color/bw between > sessions rather than have to kill xdm first. I'd suggest you simply use the "monochrome"[%] screen as the default and point your programs at display :0.1 when you want to use color. > A related question is, will these problems all go away with R4. We > are currently upgrading to R4 and are under the impression that color > under R4 does not have R3's serious performance problems. Yes. Color under R4 is only marginally slower than monochrome under R3; it is definitely usable. Consequently, under R4 the default, :0.0, is the color screen, and the other screen, :0.1, is "monochrome". (Notice that this means that once you switch to R4 color is no longer going to be :0.1.) [%] I put quotes around "monochrome" because the hardware is actually what X would call PseudoColor. (PseudoColor with a two-entry colormap, to be sure, but still PseudoColor.) The MIT server does not provide access to this facility, both because you don't necessarily *want* it to be PseudoColor and because it's difficult to tell the mono plane of a cg4 from a real bwtwo, which *is* monochrome. der Mouse old: mcgill-vision!mouse new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu