Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!mintaka!bloom-beacon!dont-send-mail-to-path-lines
From: rws@expo.lcs.mit.EDU (Bob Scheifler)
Subject: Re: Bug in Storing non-String types to a resource database?
Message-ID: <9105271947.AA23488@expire.lcs.mit.edu>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
References: <1991May20.192203.8525@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: 27 May 91 19:47:37 GMT
Lines: 23

    Basically, I think this is probably a bug that nobody has encountered yet.

It has been seen before, and "fixed" for R5.

    Unfortunately, though one can write out non-String values to a resource file,
    you can't read them back in!

You can't write them out in a reasonable fashion either.  A hex dump is not
very satisfactory, and endian problems, etc.

    It does seem apparent to me that the resource database routines
    were intended to handle non-String values (by the simple reason that there is 
    a "type" field in all the Put/Get calls to the resource manager), but these 
    were never fully implemented.

I'd say rather it's apparent resource databases were never intended to handle
non-String values, but there remain remnants of an incompletely-conceived
attempt. :-)

    Will this be in X11R5?

Since you (nor anyone else) have made no (reasonable :-) proposal, and it's
too late, nothing will change for R5.