Subject: Re: colors change when lose focus

From: Dan Schmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 10:48:48 -0400

Robertson G Davenport <[email-masked]> says:
| I was afraid of this.  I think I like my 1280x1024x256 resolution enough to 
| let Emacs flicker when I switch to color-hungry programs.

I also run in 1280x1024x256.  One thing that helps me is to use a
virtual screen manager.  I have six "screens" that I can switch
between.  One has emacs and a couple DOS windows, one has my mail
program, one has netscape, etc.  When you click on a program in the
taskbar, your screen is switched for you.  This at least means that
when I have a program up that wants to grab all the colors, like
Netscape, there's nothing else on the screen to look bad.

I tried out a few, and the one I liked best is called Vern; it's
lightweight but mostly powerful enough for me.  You can find it at
http://www.cam.org/~oneguy/vern95/index.html.  There's a good list of
other similar programs at
http://www.magpage.com/~cwagner/winman.html?=Virtual+Window+Managers.

Dan Schmidt  |  [email-masked]  |  http://www2.lglass.com/~dfan

---

From: "George V. Reilly" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 96 16:44:00 PDT

"Rob" writes:
) I've set my background color to LightGray, and whenever I switch
) to some other programs, the color flops over to dark green.
) It's restored when I put Emacs back in focus, but it would be
) nice to still be able to see the text in there when another
) window has focus.  Is this a common/known 'feature'?
)
) I'm not sure if it's because I set the background color, if it's
) the color chosen (not one of the 'sweet 16'), or if it's just
) that the app I switch to muck around with the color palette - or
) all of the above.  Any advice or comments?

All of the above.  Palettes in Windows are evil and braindead.
I speak from bitter experience.

One way to work around this is to switch to a 16-bit or 24-bit
colour video mode, if you have a suitable video card.

A better solution would be for Emacs to only allocate entries in
the palette for those colours it's currently using, rather than
for all of the colours that it knows about.  At least, that's what
I think it's doing---I looked at the code for a minute, but I can't
be sure.
 --
/George V. Reilly   <[email-masked]>   <[email-masked]>
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