Re: [cc65] TGI palettes (was: TGI colors revisited)

Hi Daniel,

> Remember that in Atari, you have a driver with few simultaneous
> colors (ie, 1 or 2) from a palette with many (128) and at the same
> time drivers with several colors (16) with no palette. And you can
> select the driver at run-time.

All my statements so far claim to justify such a scenario. Especially
the pseudo codeline

"Is the TGI_COLOR_RED macro value smaller than tgi_getcolorcount() ?"

tries to find out if the TGI_COLOR_RED macro is usable as "direct"
color in the currently at run-time selected driver. Such a macro would
be expected to have a values > 1 but < 16 so that the pseudocode would
do the right thing for both types of drivers - on the same target and
therefore with the same value for TGI_COLOR_RED. Or am I wrong at some
point?

> There is another option, the one used by earlier X windows functions. In those,
> you can "allocate" a new color, and the driver returns the best approximation
> of that color.
> [...]

While I agree that this approach is conceptually the
correct/right/best I personally feel that it is (way) too complicated
both for the driver and program implementator. Just my two cents...

> The only missing functionality is palette changing effects.

Hm, it seems that we're still looking at the topic from quite
different perspectives: Many TGI drivers don't support palettes.
Therefore a portable TGI program can't even think about palette-based
effects. For me this falls exactly into the same category sprites fall
into. Great stuff but just not portable enough.

What I wanted to point out in response to Uz' idea of dropping
palettes altogether was this:

TGI palettes aren't for useres/programs who WANT palettes to create
something beyond the ordinary. TGI palettes are rather for
users/programs who NEED palettes to reach the ordinary on as many
targets/drivers as possible.

Regards,
Oliver
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