colormap problems on 8-bit displays

[<James D Williams noaa gov>]

   We are running RH 7.2 (gnome 1.4 and sawfish)
   on an 8-bit display. Some of our applications (mainly 
   motif-based) are displaying in 'false' colors.  
   nedit is an example of an application that cannot
   allocate all of its colors. This appears to be due to   
   gnome chewing up all of the 256 colors in the public colormap.
   
   I've seen a few postings in the gnome-list about this,
   but no one seems to have a solution or workaround. We MUST
   run at 8-bits due to hardware constraints, so we can't simply
   change the video to use 16 or 24 bit planes. Does anyone have
   a solution for color problems on an 8-bit display? I would
   prefer not to use private colormaps for our apps. We'd
   prefer to use the default, public colormap. Is gnome the
   real culprit here? Is it possible to tell gnome to use   
   only a certain number of colors (is this even configurable)?
   If so, how? (Why does gnome insist on stealing all of these
   colors and leaving virtually nothing available for clients????)
   
   Thanks for suggestions.

   -- Jim