Re: list-colors-display shows only one color

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Tue, 12 Feb 2002, Andreas Schwab wrote:

> |> I'm not sure I understand what are you saying.  Are you saying that 256 
> |> is an incorrect value?  On X, x-display-color-cells returns what 
> |> DisplayCells returns, so Emacs isn't ``guilty'' ;-)
> 
> What I want to say is that DisplayCells might not be the right function
> in this context.  But then, I don't know what "default colormap" is
> supposed to mean.

I'm not a great expert on X, but AFAIK a colormap is where X looks up 
the color given its RGB values.  The default colormap is a colormap used 
for an X application unless it sets up its own colormap.

If my interpretation is correct, you cannot have more distinct colors 
than the number of cells in a colormap.

> |> The number of colors you have on a 24-bit display is much larger than 
> |> what rgb.txt shows, but the number of colors that are available in the 
> |> colormap is typically smaller, so 256 doesn't sound very wrong to me.
> 
> Why shouldn't Emacs be able to display all colors as well?

Because some of them will be identical.