[comp.windows.misc] Colourmap allocation in OpenWindows 2

laukee@canon.co.uk (David Lau-Kee) (08/22/90)

Can someone explain how colours are allocated to the colourmap in OW2?
(I run openwin -cubesize large, and run reservecolors -invramp to set aside a
grey ramp low down.)

If OW is to run with minimum colourmap flashing it ought to do as much
colourmap entry sharing as possible.  So I'd expect two xview applications,
say filemgr and shelltool, to share foreground / background colours.
(Especially since OpenLook insists this is what you should be seeing.)
What actually happens is that at least two entries are used for the window
inside colours.  It seems that filemgr and calctool (& others??) use the
first available entry in the colourmap for their inside colour (where "first"
means first after reserved area + 4 slots for border colours + 1 slot for
"desktop" colour), whereas most other applications (shelltool, textedit,
mailtool, clock) use colourmap entry 0 (which sounds a bit naughty to me).

I also notice that entry 1 is black.  Can we count on 0=white 1=black in
OpenWindows?  I understand that OW2 is X11R4 colourmap compliant so I guess
comments on what R4 says would be applicable.

David
-------------
David Lau-Kee
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