Re: ?Must run program twice for color to work?

[Liam Gumley <Liam.Gumley(at)ssec.wisc.edu>]

drphys@my-deja.com wrote:
>         I have recently upgraded to 24 bit color on my Dec Alpha.  After
> consuling David Flemming's web page I was able to get the color to work
> better, but not entirely correctly.  The problem being that the first
> run of a program which makes a color plot produces the wrong colors.
> After the initial run to completion any following runs of the same
> program work okay.  However, the initial run must complete before I get
> the desired result, multiple plots do not get any better in the same
> run.  I have had mixed results when the initial program is different
> from the second program.  I am using IDL Version 5.0 (OSF alpha).

It's hard to say exactly what the problem is without seeing any code.
However the following two items are crucial:

(1) At startup, before you issue any other commands, type
device, true=24, decomposed=0, retain=2
window, /free, /pixmap
wdelete, !d.window

(2) Always make sure that you load your color table *before* you issue a
PLOT, CONTOUR, TV, SURFACE etc. command. If your program gives the
'correct' colors on the second run, it's probably because you are not
loading the color table until *after* the plot command is issued.

Cheers,
Liam.

-- 
Liam E. Gumley
Space Science and Engineering Center, UW-Madison
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/~gumley