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From: klee@wsl.dec.com (Ken Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: DECwindows DisplayString
Message-ID: <1991Jan23.104054@wsl.dec.com>
Date: 23 Jan 91 18:40:54 GMT
References: <9101222319.AA10945@uc.msc.edu>
Sender: news@pa.dec.com (News)
Reply-To: klee@wsl.dec.com
Organization: DEC Western Software Laboratory
Lines: 28

In article <9101222319.AA10945@uc.msc.edu>, kobuchi%hoover.DECnet@win1.ims.abb.COM ("HOOVER::KOBUCHI") writes:
|> I've just encountered a problem with obtaining the display name, using
|> DisplayString.  We just upgraded our VAXes to VMS 5.4.  In this upgrade, DEC
|> changed DECwindows so that DisplayString returns a VAX/VMS device name instead
|> of a string like "nodename::0.0".
|>
|> 
|>             display = XOpenDisplay("");


I think you're asking 2 different questions here:

1.  does the VMS implementation violate the X11R4 specification?  X11R4
only specifies what happens when you XOpenDisplay(NULL) on a POSIX
system, but I think the current VMS implementation more closely matches
the spirit of the spec than does the old implementation of creating a
pseudo-string.

2.  can you assume that valid display specifiers will contain the node
name?  The specification never says this and, in fact, many high level
network interfaces, such as OSI, try hard to hide node names from you.
I recommend that you avoid writing code that requires node names.

-- 
Ken Lee
DEC Western Software Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif.
Internet: klee@wsl.dec.com
uucp: uunet!decwrl!klee