b/w reflective mode for monitor

[Adam Jackson]

On Sun, 2007-02-04 at 15:53 -0500, David W Hogg wrote:
> Perhaps this is a question for hardware folks, not devel folks, but
> could someone out there tell me if the reflective, b/w mode for the
> monitor will be 8-bit greyscale or 1-bit on-off pixels?  I am writing
> an application for the laptop, but it is *essential* that it run
> completely in the reflective mode if that is possible; I need to know
> if I can use "greys" or only strict "black" and "white".

The color/gray and transmissive/reflective switches are independent and
orthogonal, at least in hardware.

The grayscale mode uses a standard bitshift approximation to the NTSC
luminance formula: colors go in from the framebuffer, and a gray value
comes out the other side, and that gray value is then sent to the panel.
Independently of that you can adjust the backlight, where the lowest one
is "off" and all visibility is due to the mirror backing.

So, yes, you get grayscale, although it'll probably come out effectively
less than 8 bits of gray.

- ajax