porting from SGIs to Linux?

[Roland Mainz]

> Peter Bismuti 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?

You could try your luck with various OpenGL extensions, however that
depends on how fast the GL engine is (likely slower than native
Pseudocolor support or an optimizsed in-Xserver PseudoColor emulation
(like Solaris's Xsun or Egbert Eich's "neomagic" driver currently
provide)) ...

> The opinion has been expressed that PC hardware will continue to not
> support psuedo-colors, and to abandon psuedo-colors all together.

Erm, most of the modern chips support pseudocolor, it may just be
possible that the driver won't offer a seperate 8bit-only mode (AFAIK
all 3D chips will offer some sort of pseudocolor support as they have to
implement the matching OpenGL extensions).

> 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?

Yes, Egbert Eich wrote a framework for that and implemented DDX support
in the "neomagic" driver (the Psuedolor emulation consists of a
device-independent layer and some hooks in the driver). The support can
be extended to other drivers, maybe duing the X11R6.9.x cycle if Egbert
has enougth time.
Alternatively you may want to look at Solaris/x86 (which ships with the
original Motif2 by default and ViewKit is available, too) where the Xsun
driver PseudoColor emulation support for various drivers, too (m64
(PGX24/PGX64), permedia (Raptor) etc.). Finally there is Solaris/SPARC
where most of the cards have hardware-accerlated PseudoColor support,
ranging from the PGX32 up to the XVR-1000/-4000 cards (which can run
three active PseudoColor colormaps at the same time (e.g. no colormap
flashing when switching windows etc.)).

> 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?

Motif is available on Linux as OpenMotif (note that this version is not
100% compatible to the normal Motif version, OpenMotif seems to have
added some extensions which are not available to other versions of Motif
(and not everyone seems to "like" them)). ViewKit may be available from
ICS (http://www.ics.com/) but I am not sure...

> There no longer seems to be
> a free version.

Uhm... was there ever a free version of ViewKit ?

----

Bye,
Roland

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