Method and computer program product for reducing colormap flashing

A computer program product, comprising:

• a computer usable code storage medium;
• computer readable code embodied in said storage medium for reducing colormap flashing on a display system, the display system having a single hardware colormap, the computer readable code comprising:
• computer readable code devices to cause a computer to effect intercepting a request from an application program for an allocation of a private colormap;
• and
• computer readable code devices to cause a computer to effect transparently simulating the allocation of the requested private colormap by providing a reference to a cell in a default colormap and retaining the default colormap in a buffer, whereby creation of and swapping to the requested private colormap are not performed by the computer program product.

A method for reducing colormap flashing on a display system, the display system having a frame buffer which provides a single hardware colormap, the method comprising the steps of:

• intercepting a request from an application program for an allocation of a private colormap;
• transparently simulating the allocation of the private colormap using a default colormap, wherein the simulating includes allocating a secondary lookup table comprising entries mapped to entries in the default colormap;
• and
• determining whether a private color cell has been requested by the application program and writing said private color cell to the default colormap.

A method of reducing colormap flashing on a display system, the display system having a frame buffer which provides a single hardware colormap, the method comprising the steps of:

• intercepting a request from an application program for an allocation of a private colormap;
• and
• transparently simulating the allocation of the private colormap using a default colormap, wherein the default colormap is retained in the frame buffer during the simulating and the simulating includes allocating a secondary lookup table for storing information received from the application program relating to the intercepted request;
• wherein the simulating includes associating a cell in the secondary lookup table with a location of a cell in the default colormap and returning the location of the cell in the default colormap to the application program as a response to the intercepted request.