Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!apollo!oj
From: oj@apollo.uucp (Ellis Oliver Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: X11 inconsistency question
Message-ID: <392a991f.d5b2@apollo.uucp>
Date: 19 Dec 87 23:02:00 GMT
References: <8712180210.AA29937@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: oj@apollo.UUCP (Ellis Oliver Jones)
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 14

In article <8712180210.AA29937@ATHENA.MIT.EDU> marshall@software.ORG (Eric Marshall) writes:
>Why are the components of the XPoint struct
>shorts, the x and y...parameters to Xlib calls int's...
Why, indeed?  This problem shows up for XSegment, XRectangle, 
and XArc structures as well. I imagine it's because of the way
most C compilers pass scalar arguments (on the stack, by
value, always promoting to longword).  It is confusing, however.
It's too bad it's too late to make major Xlib changes.

>...height and width...are unsigned ints (especially why unsigned)?
In this case, there is a good reason.  width and height
parameters *must* *be* *positive!*  The impact of this
is that you always must specify the upper left corner for
rectangles and arc-bounding-boxes.