Bug in xdvi colourmap handling

janl@linpro.no janl@linpro.no
Mon, 01 Nov 1999 22:32:51 +0100


martin.ward@smltd.com (Martin Ward) tastet:
> [Resending --karl]
> 
> I couldn't find out where to report bugs in xdvi, so I have sent it to you:
> 
> xdvi tries to allocate colours to itself and will not work properly
> if there aren't enough colours available, but it doesn't seem
> to be able to re-use colours allocated to another program,
> even if they are the colours it wants!

This is correct.  Xdvi needs a contignous range of colours to be as
fast as it is at drawing anti-aliased glyps.  Thus it accepts no
substitutes.  It's not a bug, it's a feature ;-)

> The manual mentions that Netscape is often a cause of this problem,
> but doesn't mention that xdvi itself can cause the problem!

Ah, but netscape eats all available colours.  Xdvi is less greedy.

> If I try to invoke two copies of xdvi (to view two different files),
> the first one comes up OK but the second one complains about the shortage
> of colours and gives a poor display quality.

Yes.

Nicolai