[comp.windows.open-look] XView vs. NCD X-Terminals - reversed colors

x-window@uni-paderborn.de (X-Window Betreuung) (04/05/91)

We have some problems running XView-applications on our monochrome
NCD-Terminals. Parts of the windows come out in reversed colours, e.g.
the dial-plate of clock is black, the day-display in xcalentool has
black entry-lines and so on. It is not a big problem but it is
annoying, especially with filemgr, where a files icon doesn't get
reversed correctly when it is clicked. 

I tried to change background- and foreground-color with the
commandline options -fg black -bg white, with -foreground black
-background white and with -reverse, but this doesn't affect the
application in any way. This doesn't work on our sun's either. So I
believe it is not a problem of the NCD-terminal but an XView bug.
(btw., on our colour-NCD all works fine).

Anyone out there who knows a solution (or at least an explanation)?

Greetings, Swen

--

---->  Swen Thuemmler  *  X-Betreuung  *  <swen@uni-paderborn.de>  <----

tom@elan.Elan.COM (Thomas Smith) (04/09/91)

From article <X-WINDOW.91Apr5094819@athene.uni-paderborn.de>, by x-window@uni-paderborn.de (X-Window Betreuung):
> We have some problems running XView-applications on our monochrome
> NCD-Terminals. Parts of the windows come out in reversed colours, e.g.
> the dial-plate of clock is black, the day-display in xcalentool has
> black entry-lines and so on.
> So I believe it is not a problem of the NCD-terminal but an XView bug.

You are correct.  It is a Sun bug.  Many application developers make the
erroneous assumption that the pixel value representing black will be 1,
and the one representing white will be 0.  On the Sun, this is true, but
on the NCD, as well as many other displays, white is 1 and black is 0.

In XView version 1.0.1 there were several places where this assumption
was made.  In version 2.0, all but one were fixed.  The one that remains
occurs when you specify glyphs for scrolling lists - they appear inverted.
I sent the fix for this one to Sun (along with the others), back during
the beta for 1.0.1, but it still hasn't been fixed.

There still may be instances of this problem in the applications comprising
OpenWindows 2.0, as well.

Hope this helps.

    Thomas Smith
    Elan Computer Group, Inc.
    (415) 964-2200
    tom@elan.com, ...!{ames, uunet, hplabs}!elan!tom