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> This is because the X11 protocol was designed way back in the 80s, when it was completely unfathomable that anyone would need more than 32 bits per pixel. Ma

by hulitu 1y ago

> This is because the X11 protocol was designed way back in the 80s, when it was completely unfathomable that anyone would need more than 32 bits per pixel. Maybe I'm too old, but i clearly remember SGI supporting more than 8 bits for colour (48 bit ?).

bitwize 1y ago
That would have been impossible without a display server that supported X plus some other protocol (much like Sun display servers supported both X and NeWS). See, for example, the protocol spec for the AllocColor request: https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/xproto/x11protocol.html#requests:AllocColor https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/xproto/x11protocol.ht... Note that the 'pixel' return value, representing the pixel value on the display of the returned color, is a CARD32 (that is, unsigned 32-bit integer). If you have sources for SGI supporting display of >32bpp images, I'd really like to see them because I'm curious as to how it's done. Note that handling of >32bpp images doesn't count; I can write code that uses any pixel format I like and then convert it to 24bpp or 32bpp for display.