In article <4654876D.12176.411FEF@twegner.swbell.net>, "Tim Wegner" <twegner@swbell.net> writes:
Why?
Because regardless of whatever the DAC was doing in old-skool VGA land, the GIF file would retain all 8-bits of precision. The WinFract and xfractint code would have retained all 8-bits of precision. The remaining code in fractint that does computation on color values would have retained all 8-bits of precision. The speed excuse just doesn't wash with me; we're talking right shifting the BYTE by 2 bits before you store it. This is not anything that's going to tax even an 80286. Never mind the fact that eventually VGA drivers caught up to the normal world of graphics and had 8-bit channels in their DACs. How long have VGA cards had 8-bit channels in DACs? I'm willing to bet its been at least 10 years. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>