PseudoColor and DirectColor visuals (was Re: Documentation?)

[Glynn Clements]

Patrick O'Donnell wrote:

> Speaking of which -- the applications I'm maintaining are wedded to
> using a writable color map, which has always been PseudoColor, which,
> as you point out, pretty much means 8-bit.  I've been toying with
> expanding the apps' repertoire to accepting a DirectColor visual, but
> I've noticed that not a lot of servers actually offer one.  Would I be
> wasting my time adding in the necessary support for DirectColor?

Probably. So much stuff breaks with a DirectColor visual that no-one
ever uses one.

The main problem with relying upon a PseudoColor visual is that the
hardware support could quite quickly go the way of floppy drives and
serial and parallel ports.

The only reason the chipset vendors still provide hardware VGA
compatibility is that "safe mode" relies upon it. If they ever figure
out how to eliminate that requirement, the video palette will
disappear overnight.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>