The original question:
========================================================================
Sorry for the slightly off-topic question. I'm having troubles
getting Maple V Release 4 to display on my Sparc-5 with the S24 graphics
card. Maplesoft claims it's Sun's problem; Sun claims its Maple's
problem. Seems that this is the only forum in which things actually
get fixed!
We're using Maple on two Sparc-5/85's -- identical configurations
except for the graphics cards: one has TGX graphics, the other TCX.
Both are running Solaris 2.5.1 and CDE 1.0.2.
On the machine with TGX graphics (8bit), Maple displays fine -- text
in black, input in red, output in blue, and graphics display in color.
On the machine with TCX graphics (24bit), the Maple display is
monochrome -- text in black, input in black, output in black, and
graphics sometimes map to white on white!
After turning Maple debugging on (add "MapleVR4.Debug: true" to
..Xdefaults), I get the following when launching Maple:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XMonochromeMgr: initialization succeeded
17 stipples, colormap ID 43
Sysname = SunOS
Nodename = oconto
Release = 5.5.1
Version = Generic_103640-04
Machine = sun4m
GUI Version = Motif 1.2.3
Warning: Output to a non visible window
....
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maple certainly isn't convinced that the TCX graphics is capable of
24bit color!
Any ideas out there on what might be wrong? Funny that Maple-V R3
displayed just fine to TCX graphics (so much for "upgrades"). Launching
X with 8bit color depth is _not_ an option -- we need 24bit for other
applications. Anybody else out there with S24 graphics seeing the same
thing? Anybody successfully runing Maple V R4 on _any_ 24bit displays?
========================================================================
We had a couple of suggestions on what to test:
1) Check for the behavior in openwin (same problem),
2) check for dynamic library loads with ldd to make sure that static
libraries weren't causing the problem (looked good),
3) check for the behavior in 8bit mode (never checked this),
4) try to launch Maple in 8bit mode with xmaple -depth 8 or some
such hook (Maple, unfortunately, does not support such an
option).
We never checked the 8bit mode because we were not able to find how one
tells the S24 graphics card to use on 8bits...
These were all excellent suggestions, after testing all of these,
we came to the conclusion (suggested by several others) that this
problem is, in fact, a bug in Maple. After working with the Maple
tech. support for a while, their developer has changed his diagnosis
and a bug in Maple has been filed. We're currently waiting for a
patch to be issued (hopefully soon)!
We did receive one confirmation of Maple V Release 4 running on an
Ultra 170 with Creator3D graphics in 24bit mode, so this appears to be
S24-specific. And for those that asked, Maple is a general symbolic
mathematics package (much like mathematica)...
Thanks to the following for their suggestions:
Bob Woodward <bobw@kramer.filmworks.com>
"Matthew Stier" <mstier@hotmail.com>
Justin Young <justiny@cluster.engr.subr.edu>
dav@litronic.com (David L. Markowitz)
Tim Carlson <tim@santafe.edu>
--Michael Zika Nuclear Engineering
System Administrator Texas A&M University
(409) 862-1158 zika@trinity.tamu.edu
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