cutting.pa@XEROX.COM (03/09/89)
I have a Sun 4/260 with a grayscale monitor. What this turns out to be is a color machine (cgtwo) with the monitor connected to just one of the colors. This provides eight-bit per pixel gray scale with a color map interposed. The color map ordinarily maps from eight bit values to triples of eight bit values. As only one of the triple is used, the color map functionally maps from eight bit values to eight bit values, rendering it only of novelty value. The problem is that it is impossible to tell from software when a grayscale monitor is present. This works fine if one writes all of one's code presuming grayscale, only using colors with equal red, green and blue values, but should one want things to appear differently on grayscale & color monitors, one finds oneself up a creek. I think the solution is to have the server take a '-gray' option to force it to treat the color monitor as a grayscale monitor, i.e. telling clients that a grayscale monitor is present and only allowing color map entries whose red, green and blue values are equal. Has anyone else delt with this? Thanks. Doug