Palette Police -- Edward Reid <ed@titipu.resun.com> writes in support of Matt Neuburg's complaint about programs messing with the "colors" on his 4-bit monitor. "Yeah! Keep on them. I don't use IN CONTROL, but I have the same complaint about Quicken and Retrospect. I can understand a graphics program playing with the palette, but for the others it's just plain rude. I think it's a problem specific to 2-bit and 4-bit mode, although I tried some program a few months ago that had an option to "Use system color palette" to fix this problem. I don't know enough about color palette management to understand exactly what's going on, but my guess is that programs are tested on 8-bit color monitors and black and white monitors, but seldom on anything in between. Also, the problem might be more or less severe depending on how the user has customized the display (though I'm only conjecturing at this point). For example, I've changed my desktop to be a uniform gray instead of the standard dither. The programs we are discussing turn the desktop black, which is immediately obvious. It might not be as obvious with the standard desktop."

Permanent article URL: http://db.tidbits.com/article/2409
This is a specially formatted version of this TidBITS article that removes colors, and optionally removes images; it's designed to minimize the use of ink and paper.
Unless otherwise noted, this article is copyright © 1993 TidBITS Publishing, Inc.. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. Reuse governed by this Creative Commons License: http://www.tidbits.com/terms/.