[net.works] workstation trends and color - image processing & display control

jhall@ihuxu.UUCP (John R. Hall-"the samurai MTS") (07/25/84)

Color isn't always desirable for image processing.  The last place I worked at,
the customer wasn't willing to pay the price for storage of grey (4-bit) images;
color was out of the question.  In their opinion, the enhanced image
was not worth the additional storage cost.  Of course, we're not talking about
a workstation here; it probably would have cost a million dollars to add color.
There are also some tricks that can be played, but I can't talk about them.

The current project I'm on uses a display control terminal which is just a
VT100 B/W terminal.  Color is an option, but (a typical ATT Bell Labs
problem?) I have no contact with the customer, so I don't know if they
would be willing to pay the several thousand dollars it would cost.  I like
color and wish the customer wanted it so we would have to buy some color
terminals for me to play with in the lab.

I don't know about circuit design, except I took a course at Univ. of Illinois
where the prof said it wasn't clear that color workstations sped up the
development of a computer design.  I'm open-minded; seems to me like it
might be useful.
-- 
--John R. Hall, ...ihnp4!ihuxu!jhall