Bit depths in X

[Mark Komarinski]

Non-hypothetical situation, and I'm getting stuck on it.

Some of my users has an app that only runs on an 8-bit depth X display.
But they want to run the main display (for e-mail, web, etc) at 16 bit.

So far, I've found two options.  The first is to run two separate X
displays, one running at 8 bit, and the other at 16.  This is a real
hack, and doesn't even work all that well because two versions of KDE
running as the same user will conflict.

The other option is to use something like Xnest, which seems to be
the situation this app was written for.  The idea is you can start a
sub-X session using a different bit depth other than the main display.
But I can't get it to start.  If I give a setting other than the existing
bit depth, I get:

Fatal server error:
Unable to find desired default visual.

That's real helpful.  The man page for Xnest says to look at xdpyinfo for what
bit depths are available, and it always reports all the bit depths
from 1 to 32 (and I'm running at 16).

Any ideas, or is there a third option I've missed?

-Mark
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20030306/84d40805/attachment.bin