- For some applications 8-bit color channels don't have sufficient
- accuracy (film and IBR, for example). If you're in this situation
- you'll be happy to know that Mesa supports 16-bit and 32-bit color
- channels through the OSMesa interface. When using 16-bit channels,
- channels are GLushorts and RGBA pixels occupy 8 bytes. When using 32-bit
- channels, channels are GLfloats and RGBA pixels occupy 16 bytes.
+For some applications 8-bit color channels don't have sufficient
+precision.
+OSMesa supports 16-bit and 32-bit color channels through the OSMesa interface.
+When using 16-bit channels, channels are GLushorts and RGBA pixels occupy
+8 bytes.
+When using 32-bit channels, channels are GLfloats and RGBA pixels occupy
+16 bytes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before version 6.5.1, Mesa had to be recompiled to support exactly
+one of 8, 16 or 32-bit channels.
+With Mesa 6.5.1, Mesa can be compiled for either 8, 16 or 32-bit channels
+and render into any of the smaller size channels.
+For example, if Mesa's compiled for 32-bit channels, you can also render
+16 and 8-bit channel images.