Re: DirectColor-visual?

[Alan Hourihane <alanh at fairlite dot demon dot co dot uk>]

On Mon, Jan 13, 2003 at 07:43:40PM -0500, Harold L Hunt II wrote:
> Francisco,
> 
> Do you know what a DirectColor visual is?
> 
> Do you know why you would need a DirectColor visual?
> 
> Do you know of any Windows-based graphics cards that actually support 
> DirectColor?
> 
> 
> My understanding of DirectColor is that it allows you to specify the 
> range of colors that will be used in a mode that is similar to 
> TrueColor... however, I don't know of a single Windows graphics card 
> that allows you to do that.  I don't know of any program that utilizes 
> such a visual either.  As such, there is no support for DirectColor in 
> Cygwin/XFree86.  I don't expect that there will ever be DirectColor 
> support in Cygwin/XFree86 unless someone can explain to me that I am way 
> wrong.
> 
> DirectColor seems like a lot of things in X: it was thought to be REALLY 
> useful when X was designed, but it turned out to be anything but useful. 
>  I read about those things once, then I ignore them after that.
> 
> So, anyone else know what DirectColor is?

DirectColor is a read/write colormap just like PseudoColor.
TrueColor is a read only colormap just like StaticColor.

Direct/True giving more colors than the other two though.

Alan.