porting from SGIs to Linux?

[Ralph Thomas]

I did most of the work making the IRIX desktop run on XFree86 at SGI,
so I have some experience with this.

If you only use PseudoColor for altering image colors then you might
try using the "SGI_color_table" OpenGL extension -- you can draw your
image as an OpenGL texture map on a GLXWindow and then use the color
table to change how it gets drawn). There is documentation available
here:

http://www.opengl.org/resources/tutorials/advanced/advanced97/notes/node133.html
http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?coll=0650&db=man&fname=/usr/share/catman/g_man/cat3/OpenGL/glcolortable.z&srch=glColorTable

Often widget code on SGI machines uses the overlay planes (which are
accessed through a PseudoColor visual). You can either use the XSHAPE
extension (for something like dragging an icon) or do drawing
differently (for a rubber band you might draw the lines using XOR
twice instead of using the overlay planes).

ICS offer ViewKit, and also offer consulting services and support
contracts. See: http://www.ics.com/ for more information.

Best regards,
 Ralph

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 12:09:54 -0800, Peter Bismuti <bismuti at hotmail.com> wrote:
>  
>  
> I'd like to port some applications from SGIs which use a Motif/ViewKit UI to
> Linux machines running RedHat.
> 
> These applications rely on pseudo-colors.   My first question is: is there a
> simple way of doing this?  Is there some last simple function that can be 
> applied to the final pixmap that can alter the colors of the drawing?
> 
> The opinion has been expressed that PC hardware will continue to not support
> psuedo-colors, and to abandon psuedo-colors all together.  Perhaps the 
> performs penalty will ultimately be a motivation on the long term?  However 
> some applications may not even be alive before that happens.  Is there a 
> temporary solution?
> 
> So my second question is, I've heard that the new X.org release offers 
> software support for pseudo-colors?  Could this be used to at least display 
> on a Linujx machine while these apps while running on an SGI? If so, how can
> the issue of the Motif/ViewKit code be handled?  There no longer seems to be
> a free version.  Just pay for the commercial version?  Port everything 
> supported by Mesa, i.e. LessTiff?  This is a lot of work I'd prefer not to 
> have to do.
> 
> Even help? 

--
ralph thomas - ralpht at gmail.com -- www.infinite-imagination.com