[techtalk] Problems w/Gimp

[Kelly Lynn Martin]

On Sat, 20 Nov 1999 00:30:42 -0600 (CST), Darren Osadchuk <osadchuk at pangea.ca> said:

>I'm having some odd colour problems with Gimp (and Wordperfect, it
>turns out). When I start Gimp, I get a message which reads, "Unable
>to allocate sufficient colormap entries. Try exiting other color
>intensive applications." The Gimp window then appears in purple
>(which it shouldn't be). Clicking on it will make it turn into the
>proper grey, but everything else on the screen goes wacky. As soon as
>I move the mouse, everything reverts to its normal (screwed up)
>status. When I start WP, I get the message "Cannot allocate colormap
>entry for default background" and the WP document window is in black
>and white. Any explanations as to what's causing this would be most
>welcome.

You are running X in 8 bit mode.  Gimp, like most graphics
applications, requires a lot of colors, and when run on an 8 bpp
display, attempts to allocate a "color cube" that will take up most of 
the 256-entry colormap.  If you're running a WM like Enlightenment,
odds are there won't be that many free colors available.

There are a variety of solutions.  If you have enough video memory and 
your card supports it, you can run X in 16 or 24 bit mode.  There are
disadvantages to this as well; you lose color resolution in 16 bit
mode, and speed in both modes, and applications takes more memory.
You can also tell Gimp to use a "private color map", which means Gimp
will use its own colormap instead of the system colormap.  This will
lead to "flashing", however, which may be unpleasant (Gimp windows
will be all the wrong colors when a non-Gimp window is active, and
vice versa).

What version of Gimp do you have?  The behavior you're reporting
sounds like 0.54 -- I'd hope that nobody is distributing such an
ancient version.... 1.1 has GtkRGB support and should cope even with
very restricted colormaps, thanks to the magic of Raph... :)

Kelly

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