20010726: Color allocation problems with garp

Art,

You can launch ntl with a number of colors to be used, such as 
"ntl -s 32" to use only 32 colors for satellite images instead
of the default of 95. 

KDE takes up a lot of colors for all those icons. I set all the icons
to gray instead of colors. That put the desktop in a much better
setting, allowing the full number of colors.

Here is a link showing the menu configuration I used for the look 
and feel icons:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/gempak/tutorial/gifs/linux_kde1.gif

RedHat 7.1 also supports hot keys to shift between multiple
X servers. You can have one server running at 8 bit for GEMPAK stuff and
the other for your 24 bit. Here is Mike Leuthold's message:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/glimpse/gempak/4521

I don't know of plans for having GEMPAK deal with 24 bit colors (since
graphics take up 3 times more memory). It would be nice to eliminate the
requitement for the default visual to be 8 bits- and have the software
find the supported visual, but that doesn't solve the problem for
the Xfree86 server that linux uses that only supports a
single visual. The Hot swapping  between multiple servers in linx
does accomplish that.

Steve Chiswell
Unidata User Support




>From: "Arthur A. Person" <address@hidden>
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200107261744.f6QHio111774

>Hi...
>
>I'm upgrading to RedHat 7.1 and when I try to run garp on KDE, it can't
>allocate enough color entries.  I've tried the ntl trick but even after a
>reboot and logging on without running anything else, I still get ntl
>telling me it would like to allocate 148 colors but can only find 98.  I'm
>running in 8-bit mode.  How can I make this work on RH7.1?  Are there any
>plans to upgrade garp/gempak to run in 24-bit mode?
>
>                                  Thanks.
>
>                                    Art.
>
>Arthur A. Person
>Research Assistant, System Administrator
>Penn State Department of Meteorology
>email:  address@hidden, phone:  814-863-1563
>