256-color on quick option?

mbrown · Post by **mbrown** » 2005-03-17 16:39

I use a shortcut to activate a listening viewer with command line parameters to launch when a remote user is going to back-connect to me. With 20.2, I have noticed that I cannot get a 256-color depth with the "quick option" parameter. Quick option 3 gives full color, and quick option 4 (which USED to give 256-color) now gives only 64-color. I usually stick with with the quick option 4, even on LAN connections, for the speed, but now I cannot stand the look of the 64-color.

Could you have one of the quick options give 256-color? The settings of quick option 4 in version 18 were great. Thanks.

redge · Post by **redge** » 2005-03-17 18:42

1 or 2 options for custom config I would be better ?

Post by **UltraSam** » 2005-03-17 20:11

...

Going to think about the 256 colors return... was pretty sure this remark would popup one day or another

mbrown · Post by **mbrown** » 2005-03-18 13:34

PLEASE bring the 256-color back. While my wife might appreciate the nice shade of pink that appears on a 64-color version of Windows 2000, it isn't doing anything for me.

All joking aside, thanks for considering it, Sam.

Agret · Post by **Agret** » 2005-03-19 07:00

I second the return of 256 and I also second the suggestion of 2 custom settings.

Furty · Post by **Furty** » 2005-04-05 17:33

*Please* change the "256 color" option back to 8 bit instead of 6 bit.
Not only that i's a viewer bug, it also is very ugly

An old RC 19 viewer always worked for me with that setting (also with 20.3 server).

Also, all of the following options give me only 16 bit (system menu / connection info):
/8bit
/256colors
/64colors
/8colors
/8greycolors
/4greycolors
/2greycolors

@ForumAdmin: Please move this to "Verified Bugs".

mbrown · Post by **mbrown** » 2005-04-05 20:25

Here's what I have done to workaround the missing 256-color issue:

Connect your viewer to a server and set the options just the way you like them, then close the viewer. In your temp directory, edit the "options.vnc" file in Notepad or some other text editor. Change the "QuickOption" attribute value to 0 (that's a ZERO). Save the file, close your text editor, and change the options.vnc file to read-only.

Now I get my 256-color option and all of the rest of my favorite settings everytime I launch a new viewer, no matter how I change the settings on future sessions. Woo-hoo!

Furty · Post by **Furty** » 2005-04-06 16:47

Thanks Michael.
"In the good old days with the RC19 viewer", %temp%\options.vnc wasn't used and the quick options were not saved at all. "/quickoption 3" gave me reliably 256 colors.

I haven't analyzed the complete behaviour of RC20, but maybe the below can help the developers:

Found out that those 3 settings settings are the ones to set for working 256 colors:
8bit=1
QuickOption=0
autoDetect=0
All 3 can't be set from the GUI as far as i have seen.

The last 2 are set to 1 in options.vnc if you use commandline parameters (e.g. /password xyz), but only while you are connected!
I suspect that the commandline parameter parser in RC20 is severely broken, see also [topic=2383][/topic]

8bit=2 (6 Bit) and 8bit=3 (3 Bit) are strangely only working with their quick options.
They look very ugly anyway, the RC19 fuzzy quick option was way better imho

btw: Does anyone know how to try greyscale ([topic=2231][/topic])?

Furty · Post by **Furty** » 2005-04-11 12:41

@Devs: thanks for the 20.6 viewer, where the descriptions of the quick options match the settings.

But:

a) QuickOption gets always set to "1" -> it is not possible to save custom settings as default in the GUI.
Even setting it manually to zero in the options.vnc does not work.
Previously (at least with RC19) none of quick options radio buttons was selected by default.

b) commandline options (e.g. /64colors) are still not working

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 2005-05-12 14:21

AHaaaaa!!!!

Command line options do work, but you must include /noauto in the command line.

Bug: In VncOptions.cpp, autoDetect is defaulted to true, and has to be explicitely turned off even when command line options are supplied. What should actually happen is that when a command line option affecting the encoding/color settings is supplied, autoDetect should be set to false as well.

Feature Request: it should be possible to set a default color mode, and explicitely _allow_ auto detection, to allow for more useful behaviour over a slow link: rather than 5-10 seconds of high-latency-bandwidth-hogging-16-bit-color while the viewer figures out whether this is usable (think modem link to a 233mhz nt4 box), we start with the specified color (2 bit?), and _increase_ the bit rate if bandwidth detections sees fit.

In other words:

Okay: "vncviewer <target>" follows the current settings (and would therefore imply the new '/auto' switch)
Okay: "vncviewer <target> /noauto" follows the current settings (16 bit with no further detection)
BugFix: "vncviewer <target> /64colors" (or any other color setting) should imply "/noauto"
Feature: "vncviewer <target> /6greycolors /auto" (or any other color setting) should start with 3 bit color, and then continue with the autodetection logic from there.

With the exception of the auto-with-specified-default, it appears that this can all be implemented inside VNCOptions::SetFromCommandLine(LPTSTR szCmdLine).

Furty · Post by **Furty** » 2005-05-13 20:23

Thanks a lot "Guest" for pointing to the /noauto switch, we come nearer to the root of the problems!

My tests showed now that:
the -quickoption was broken in v20.3 (as "Auto" is disabled when using the GUI), this was corrected in v20.5.
That is why i just assumed that the command line color modes were broken too, which is not the case.
With the "/noauto knowledge", the current behaviour is at least ok for me.

What i've seen after a bit try & error:
There are two bugs with "Save connection settings as default":
a) works only when specifying "/noauto", even a second click on "Options..." shows that the settings have not been saved internally

What about a radio button "Custom" (= /noauto)?
b) the options.vnc is only written on "Connect", not when clicking "OK"

redge · Post by **redge** » 2005-05-13 21:21

guest Ultrasam?

We would be very happy if ALL command line can be shown and not remembered from only secret of developers for "standard" arguments.

How know the example vncviewer -noauto or winvnc -id if not documented in command line or on http://doc.uvnc.com ?
One day you can forgot some hidden command too !

cwillu · Post by **cwillu** » 2005-05-13 21:32

I am what I am, that being cwillu@sasktel.net.

The source is available for all to see, mistakes are made, and I'm just another lowly user :p

cwillu · Post by **cwillu** » 2005-05-13 21:35

...who forgot to type in his name the first time, and forgot to mention that he did so the second time.

redge · Post by **redge** » 2005-05-13 23:14

cwillu

The source is available for all to see

but the source can be understand only from coders or highly experienced users of programming

that not ability of majority of end-user level, don't know coding like me