Re: Colormaps (a favorite subject!)

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

Kenneth P. Bowman <kbowman@null.net> wrote in message
kbowman-2803001837260001@tl6-218-030.tca.net">news:kbowman-2803001837260001@tl6-218-030.tca.net...
> In article <38E0C93C.AF2BD78D@ssec.wisc.edu>, "Liam E.Gumley"
> <Liam.Gumley@ssec.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
> > I would also
> > encourage you to start thinking about designing you application to work
> > in 24-bit graphics mode, where color flashing problems do not exist, and
> > you always have 256 color table entries available.
>
> And where you cannot do 24-bit PostScript output to print your pretty
> 24-bit displays.
>
> Seriously, I agree with Liam that an all 24-bit world nice.  I'm very
> frustrated by the inability to make hard copies of 24-bit graphics other
> than through bitmaps.  This is becoming more and more of a problem as our
> displays change to 24-bit and my graphics tools (want to) change with
> them.

Ken,

It seems like the PRINTER device allows decomposed 24-bit colors to be used.
The following example produces a blue on white plot in IDL 5.3 on my
Windows98 PC. When dialog_printersetup is called, I select the 'HP Color
Laserjet PS' printer, with output directed to a file.

result = dialog_printersetup()
set_plot, 'PRINTER'
device, /true_color
plot, indgen(10), color='FF0000'XL
device, /close

Something similar could be probably be configured in IDL for UNIX. Let me
know how it goes.

Cheers,
Liam.