X11DRV_DIB_[Get/Set]ImageBits in 1, 4 and 8 bit X modes.

[Hetz Ben Hamo]

This is from my experience only while administrating tons of Linux 
workstations with almost any graphics cards...

1 & 4 bit - very rarely used (unless you're talking about monochrome screens 
in embedded - by then 4 bit is important for gray scales..)

8 bit - used mostly on old system with old graphics cards when 16 bit & up 
are slow - I'm talking about graphics chips like : trident 89xx family, ATI 
Mach 8, Cirrus Logic (all ISA versions), ancient S3 chips, and Number 9 (ISA) 
- on all of those cards it is better to run XFree in 8 bit or else you'll get 
a totally slow graphics...

Everything else today on X86 is running at least 8 bit and on 99% - 16 bit 
and up...

You might want to be careful regarding to 8 bit and up modes - like 15 bit, 
24 and 32 bit. I think Matrox old graphics cards (with their 2.3MB RAM) are 
using packed pixels so it could be a bit problematic...

Hope this helps...

Hetz


On Friday 22 February 2002 01:49, David Hammerton wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm presently modifying the X11DRV dibsection code for slight speed
> improvements using shared memory pixmaps and the like. Im into the "clean
> up and make it work on all systems" stage of thing, and I have a question.
> Do people ever worry about what happens if the user is running in a 1, 4 or
> 8 bit X mode? This has some wacky code, which I am unable to test on my
> machine (or any machine around).. So i'm implementing what I think _should_
> do the trick - but I have no idea if it will work..
>
> Is it a big issue?
> Any suggestions to the problem?
>
> Thanks,
> David