On Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 02:09 AM, Russell Penney wrote:

> Can I suggest that it should really be made a primitive to decide at 
> startup
> the correct depth to start at? In fact I assumed that is what it did.
>
> The statement "very few people have their OS display depth set to 16
> bits..." sounds a bit dodgy to me seeing Squeak is run on many 
> different
> systems and at least some are old equipment.
>
> Of course you need to do this quickly so how about the compromise of:
>
> SomeClass (not sure where)>>initialDisplayDepth
>
> 	<non-existent primitive>
> 	^32
>
> That is used to load the preference unless its overridden.

Actually, after poking around in DisplayScreen, it looks like this 
primitive does exist.  (I remember it didn't exist in the early days... 
I don't remember exactly when it was added.)

See DisplayScreen class>>actualScreenSize... this returns the native OS 
screen depth (if the primitive is implemented for that platform).

We probably should just have the Squeak depth set to match the native 
depth on startup.  However, I'm not sure about adding this at this late 
date for 3.7, since it would be a new thing in the system startup... we 
could wait for 3.8alpha and then try that.

Maybe we should not bother making any display depth change for 3.7, 
then.

- Doug


>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
>> [mailto:squeak-dev-
>> bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Doug Way
>> Sent: Thursday, 17 June 2004 2:58 PM
>> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
>> Subject: Re: Default UI preferences for 3.7
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, June 16, 2004, at 09:05 PM, Raymond Asselin wrote:
>>
>>> Le 2004/06/16, Doug Way <dway at mailcan.com> écrivait :
>>>
>>> Hi Doug,  I think we should go with 32 bits for the display depth,
>>> don't
>>> you ?
>>
>> Good point, I'll add that one to the list.  Offhand, I'd say yes, we
>> should switch to 32 bits.
>>
>> Pros:
>> - Better rendering of colors, of course
>> - Faster graphics performance for most, because most people will have
>> their OS display depth set to 32 bits, and performance is usually best
>> when the Squeak depth matches the OS depth
>>
>> Cons:
>> - For those who have their OS display depth set to 16 bits, Squeak
>> might show up as a black screen if the Squeak depth is 32 bits. (I've
>> seen this on some platforms, anyway.)  However, these days very few
>> people have their OS display depth set to 16 bits...
>>
>> - Doug
>>
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