[2269] in testers
Re: About the new release 7.6
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Basch)
Thu Jul 29 10:07:39 1993
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1993 10:07:29 -0400
To: Christine Ng <cstng@MIT.EDU>, testers@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Ezra Peisach's message of Wed, 28 Jul 93 10:53:19 EDT,
From: "Richard Basch" <basch@MIT.EDU>
The X screensaver on the RISC/6000 systems has been changed to use video
blanking instead of the old "X". It was discovered that the X server
was not behaving properly with the old screensaver style on the newer
machines (IBM RISC/6000 Model 220 systems). In fact, the "X"-style
screensaver would cause the X server to die on these newer systems.
In the release, the screensaver style was changed on all RISC/6000
systems for consistency, because there was currently no other
work-around. On the new Sun systems, we also are using screen blanking
because there is currently no other option, also.
When this version of the X server came out three years ago, we opted to
try to hide the change in the default behavior (video blanking became
the default when it was introduced), and it is only now that we are
encountering problems with trying to use the old-style screensaver.
This problem only became apparent with the vendor versions of the X
server and either their lack of option for the old-style or bugs in the
old-style code, to which we do not have source.
I hope this clears up the mystery. I do not believe we can change the
behavior you are seeing without causing some bigger problems, but we
will certainly reconsider which screensaver is in use when we have the
ability to revert back to the old-style on these newer platforms.
-Richard Basch
IS/DCNS Development
