Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!eng.sun.COM!dshr
From: dshr@eng.sun.COM (David Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: X cutbuffer weirdness
Message-ID: <9009181659.AA12155@devnull.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 18 Sep 90 16:41:42 GMT
Sender: root@athena.mit.edu (Wizard A. Root)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 31

Someone who appears to be called Robert Foresman replied to a question
about cut-buffers with a longish message explaining that he didn't
really understand the relevant documentation in the ICCCM but
thought that things worked roughly like this.  This was an example
of an unhelpful trend that is reducing the signal to noise ratio
on xpert.

Please,  if you know where the relevant documentation is but don't
fully understand it,  don't write long messages putting forward
your (probably incorrect) understanding.  Just point people to
the documentation and let them read it.  Then,  if they don't
understand something specific,  they can ask.  And you won't have
tempted other people to think that they understand what is going on
without the need to RTFM,  act on your (probably incorrect)
understanding,  and get themselves into trouble.

The reason why the ICCCM sections on selections are "rather large"
is because it is a complex subject with many pitfalls.  For
someone who admits that they don't understand these pitfalls to attempt
to summarize the ICCCM sections in a mail message is likely to
cause more problems than it solves.  You will note that even
though I was the editor of the ICCCM,  I am not attempting to
summarize the relevant sections - I would prefer people to
actually read them.

The second edition of the Digital Press book contains a version
of the ICCCM that contains the same information as the version
in PostScript on the R4 tape,  but is much more readable (thanks to
the efforts of the Digital Press editors).

	David.