>On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, John M McIntosh wrote:
>
>>  >Hi John
>>  >
>>  >But I do not understand because on my VM it is working?
>>  >I'm on Squeak 3.2.1Beta6MT
>>
>>  It cheerfully reports that it supports all resolutions even if the
>>  video card involved only supports say 16bit versus 32bit.
>
>Which is correct behaviour. The Mac *VM* does support all bit depths for
>the Display form. As does Windows. But not Unix, as it stands. That's all
>the primitive is about.
>
>What you suggest would be called nativeDepth or something, and it might
>indeed be interesting to have. But then, a prim that answers all available
>resolution/depth/timing combinationss to complement ioSetDisplay() would
>be nice.
>
>-- Bert

Mmm getting all the resolution/depth/timing etc combinations is a bit 
of work and also it's sometimes only an estimate of viability. That's 
why all those monitor control panels I've always seen on various 
operating systems prompt you to confirm that you can still see the 
screen in some meaningful manner after switching screen resolutions.

I should point out although 16 and 32 bit depth is offered to day on 
most new macs, you will find on older machines 32 bit might not 
technically be available because of VRAM sizes, let alone going back 
10 years to find machines that only support 256 colors. This is not a 
problem, if you set the squeak depth to 32 then quickdraw (or the 
video driver?) remaps those 32bit color values to 16 or 8. I believe 
the new primitive that lurks to allow you to change the screen 
resolution and depth will resize the screen and set the depth to the 
best fit based on the target screen which is the one that holds most 
of the squeak window for those who have multiple screens. So asking 
for 32bit might actually not get you 32bit because the hardware 
doesn't support it, but Squeak certainly will think it's in 32bit 
mode.


I'm sad to report the new imac (white and chrome table lamp like) 
that supports a 32mb video card only does video mirroring even though 
it has minivga out. I've complained to all that will listen (or not) 
that it's silly to offer video out, then only offer video mirroring, 
versus allowing one to have two independent screens.

-- 
--
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John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
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