Patches for ESO MIDAS - 24-bit and 16-bit Displays

Craig Markwardt

Introduction

Officially, ESO MIDAS does support 24-bit truecolor displays. However both 98NOV and 99NOV do not run on many Linux systems with 24-bit color. Why? It is a complicated technical problem regarding the alignment of 24-bit and 32-bit words in the computer and XServer. Many Linux video cards (or drivers) don't support 32-bit mode, which MIDAS requires. It would also be nice to support 16-bit displays, which are popular on laptops, and tend to run faster than 24-bit.

Please find below my patch to ESO MIDAS which should support all forms of 24-bit and 16-bit video displays under X windows. In addition, the graphical output obtained from COPY/DISP should be better looking and more correct.

Update

I understand that support for 16-bit and 24-bit displays has been incorporated into the official 01FEBpl1.1 version of ESO-MIDAS, available from the ESO-MIDAS web page. If you encounter problems with the patches below you should be advised to try upgrading to this version of the software.

How to Install

Binary: I have precompiled binaries available for Intel Linux and Dec Unix. Download the file idiserv.exe appropriate for your version of MIDAS, and execute these commands:

cd $MIDASHOME/$MIDVERS/system/exec
cp -p idiserv.exe idiserv.exe.orig
cp downloaded_file_path idiserv.exe
chmod ugo+x idiserv.exe

NOTE: Install at your own risk. The best solution is to obtain the source and recompile the entire distribution. Sorry, I can't compile for other architectures.

Source: If you have already compiled MIDAS for your machine, then you need to do a simple update install. The best solution is to install the new source code and then perform a complete recompile. However you may succeed with an "update" install procedure.

Modifications are confined to one directory in the MIDAS distribution, $MIDASHOME/$MIDVERS/libsrc/idi/cidi/x11. You may either download a "patch" for the directory, or a complete replacement of the directory in the form of a gzipped tar file. Both 98NOVpl2.2 and 99NOVpl2.2 are supported, so be sure to download the appropriate file for your distribution.

If you download the patch, execute these commands:

cd $MIDASHOME/$MIDVERS/libsrc/idi/cidi
patch -p0 < patch_path
cd x11
make
rm $MIDASHOME/$MIDVERS/system/exec/idiserv.exe
cd $MIDASHOME/$MIDVERS/system/idiserv/src
make

If you download the replacement tar file, execute these commands:

cd $MIDASHOME/$MIDVERS/libsrc/idi/cidi
mv x11 orig_x11
gzcat tar_file_path | tar xvf -
cd x11
make
rm $MIDASHOME/$MIDVERS/system/exec/idiserv.exe
cd $MIDASHOME/$MIDVERS/system/idiserv/src
make

NOTE: if you do only an update install, you may experience (non-fatal) strange behavior. Again, the best solution is to do a full recompile.

The patch may be copied subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Original source code for ESO MIDAS may be obtained from the MIDAS web page.

Romanian translation by Aleksandra Seremina of azoft. (not affiliated or verified by me!)