Ralph Winslow wrote: > > After X has run for awhile, I notice a substantial degradation in the > quality of the .gif images that I display. There might also be a bit of > decline iin the image quality of the .jpg images as well. I've decided > to spring for the $20 that another Mb of Vidcard memory will set me > back, but should I expect it to help, or is there some other path I > might check out? TIA for any clue. > -- > ----------------------------------------- > Ralph Winslow [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Someday soon I really MUST find a way to > piss away a LOT of bandwidth on this .sig >
I can't give you a definitive answer because this isn't my area of expertise, but I'm pretty sure I know what this is. First, you must be running your X server at 8 bits-per-pixel. At this depth, you naturally can only display 256 colors on the screen at a time (although those colors can be pretty much anything). Viewers such as xv will try to allocate as many colors from the color map as possible in order to best display the image. Then later on the cells of the map don't get deallocate so when another image is going to be displayed there aren't colors left to use. The alternative is to have the program (this works for netscape and xv) use a private color map. "Why don't they do this all the time by default?" you ask? Well, for one it uses resources (and you don't need it with a 16-bit or higher color-depth because you can always display "all colors"). For two, it makes it so that when you switch windows you get this funny change in the colors of your windows since changing the color map actually reloads the palette in your video card suddenly color 0xc5 is no longer "sea azure", now it's "psycho magenta". Of course if you're trying to view a photo-derived GIF at least now you can see the picture. When the window loses focus the colors shift back. Now, maybe you already knew the above and perhaps you're already passing the '-install' parameter to Netscape and it *still* has image degradation over time. If this is the case then I guess Netscape must not be changing its own color map for each new picture but just allocating cells until they're gone and then using the "closest" colors available after that. If this is the case it's a bug in Netscape. I think all this is correct, however I make no warranties, express or implied, as to the usability of the above information or its fitness for a particular purpose... 8) -- Jens B. Jorgensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .