iraf.net

Hi Jonathan,
It sounds like you're using an 8-bit display (the only thing
XImtool supports) but are using one of a number of window managers that
don't properly give XImtool the colormap focus. The first thing to do
is to check that this isn't a window-focus problem by clicking on the
ximtool window to select it (i.e. don't assume moving the mouse into
the window will give it the focus). If you can then move the mouse into
the window and see grayscale you'll need to change the mouse focus policy
in the linux control panel, if not then it really is a colormap focus
issue and you should try a different window manager. If you can get
the grayscale image but can't change the contrast be sure the NumLock key
isn't enabled (this changes the event mask and keeps the contrast scale
and menu selection from working). What you should see is the colormap
flash as you move in-out of the window.
Since desktops like Gnome/KDE and their applications use most of
the available 8-bit colors the flashing is almost unavoidable. Most users
end up using DS9 as the display server in 24-bit mode (see
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9), it works as a display but has a
different feature/problem set (e.g. it won't display real image
coords/pixels when images are displayed from IRAF). SAO is aware of these
problems and we still hope to upgrade XImtool to 24-bit mode at some
point.
Hope this helps, let us know if the problems continue.Regards,
Mike Fitzpatrick