problem getting pseudocolor

[Neil Smith]

On Sep 2, 2009, at 7:32 AM, Patrick O'Donnell wrote:

>> From: Michel =?ISO-8859-1?Q?D=E4nzer?= <michel at daenzer.net>
>> Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:45:36 +0200
>> Sender: xorg-bounces at lists.freedesktop.org
>>
>> On Wed, 2009-09-02 at 09:41 +0100, David Gerard wrote:
>>> 2009/9/2 Jerome Glisse <glisse at freedesktop.org>:
>>> ... DEMANDS 8-bit colour, and won't run in 24-bit colour. ...
>>
>> Those who need that should consider working on
>>
>> http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4770
>
>
> Indeed.  A four-year-old bug report (priority: High).  Then we have:
>
>
>> Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 12:09:49 +0100
>> From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
>>
>> Usually the vertical market software companies in question deal with
>> it by certifying on a very narrow range of OSes, rather than e.g.
>> filing or fixing bugs. Somewhat less than ideal.
>
> Yes, on both sides of the coin.
>
> And,
>
>> Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 09:41:36 +0100
>> From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
>>
>> I would guess: shitty, shitty  ... Awful, awful. And
>> occasionally necessary.
>
> Those tasked with maintaining "old" software that was written when
> 8-bit frame buffers were expensive, but which is still used in
> critical applications have the same lack-of-time and prioritization
> issues that X developers have.
>
> I'd think that a bit more charity could be shown to those also
> struggling in the trenches.  Different trenches -- same struggle.
>
> 		- Pat

Touchy subject?

I'm having to support old weather data visualization software, similar  
to what's still being used at National Weather Service Offices around  
this country,  in our university computer lab environment. This  
software has been the mainstay for classroom meteorology instruction  
for at least the last 2 decades.

Probably because it is scheduled to be phased out, the developer group  
(still active; www.unidata.ucar.edu) has no interest in converting the  
8-bit'ness to truecolor.  Since it has always been a simple task to  
provide  pseudocolor via a simple xorg.conf entry, it has not been a  
problem.

Given that, what would one do to determine whether or not this video  
card/monitor combo in the iMac is going to do pseudocolor?

What would the Section's and Subsections want to look like if  
pseudocolor was available? (I thought I knew; maybe it's changed)

Thanks,
-Neil