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From: meo@Dixie.Com (Miles ONeal)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Xt program resource files - How much is enough?
Message-ID: <8887@rsiatl.Dixie.Com>
Date: 29 Mar 91 04:50:04 GMT
Organization: Systems & Software Solutions, Inc.
Lines: 32

Too much is almost enough.

Unless you give them a too-easy way to really break something,
it's difficult to give them too much flexibility. I build in
reasonable, minimum defaults via the Arg structs [1] and try
to leave the product as configurable as possible. You may
need to occasionally test something in the code to make sure
things work OK.

I have been in situations where everyone likely to use the
thing had to be considered an idiot who might also explore,
so I had to take precautions against them. So far, I haven't
needed to do much of that in X.

I like the MIPS approach, as explained in the Wcl-based debugger
talk at this year's XTC - give them the capability, give them
a supported configuration, document the capability, and let
them go.

If you are writing software for the DIA, etc, you may have to
do things like hardcode colors and such [2], but most of us don't
do a lot of work that falls into that category...

-Miles

[1] I prefer to declare & initialize them together, at compile
    time, instead of link time, but almost everything I see in
    books or across the net initializes via XtSetArg().

[2] They get really ill at the idea of someone setting FG & BG
    to the same color, say, on a titlebar. Can't really blame
    them.