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From: R. Timothy Edwards (tim AT stravinsky DOT jhuapl.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 19 2002 - 09:35:35 EDT

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    Dear Rob,

Anyone have any insights into the problem?  Any known bugs or
idiosyncrasies in the interaction between Magic and Xlib in the newer
releases of XFree86?

As far as I know (and I've looked at the code pretty thoroughly), magic's
16-bit color methods are pretty straightforward.  It's using a "TrueColor"
visual, which means every color is specified by R, G, B.  To get white
where another color was intended has to be something very subtle.  I
would guess that it has something to do with the stipple pattern
generation.  Anyway, the bottom line is that I find it highly doubtful
that the magic code is at fault, and that the fault may lie with the
X server but could be something that only shows up in magic due to the
combination of colors/stipples/paint functions it uses.  Your thorough
experiment exonerates the video card, which is the usual source of such
problems (unless both machines have the same video card?).

Questions:  Have you tried this in 24-bit color, or is the graphics
card too old/too short on memory to support 24-bit color in any
reasonable resolution?  Have you tried updating XFree86 to the very
latest version, which is now 4.2 (see http://www.xfree86.org)?  Also,
did you install a pre-compiled binary for XFree86, or compile it from
source?  Are you certain that the X server you're using is the best
one for the video card you have (e.g., standard SVGA server vs. an
accelerated server) and/or have you tested more than one X server
appropriate for your video card?  Any of these things could make a
difference, as well as obscure XF86Config file settings for the
server, the screen, the monitor, the video card. . .

I've used an assortment of XFree86 versions, including 3.3, 4.0, and
4.1, on various machines, and I've never come across the peculiar
behavior you're seeing.  Not that I haven't come across various other
peculiar behaviors, some of them fatal to the X server.

						Regards,
						Tim

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