Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!oddjob!gargoyle!ihnp4!alberta!calgary!radford
From: radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: NeWS on a SUN, bug in translate?
Message-ID: <1399@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Date: 28 Feb 88 00:07:36 GMT
References: <539@modular.UUCP> <2090@natmlab.dms.oz> <1369@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> <11753@sgi.SGI.COM>
Distribution: comp
Organization: U. of Calgary, Calgary, Ab.
Lines: 25
Keywords: NeWS

In article <11753@sgi.SGI.COM>, msc@ramoth.SGI.COM (Mark Callow) writes:

> > Fixed point numbers are automatically converted to reals as required
> > in the SUN-only version of NeWS, but not in the "portable" version.
> > This is because whoever re-wrote the fixed-point arithmetic routines
> > in C rather than 68000 assembler decided that overflow checking wasn't
> > really necesary...

> The C routines were only provided as a porting aid.  Any vendor who used
> them in a product should be hung out to dry.

If I have correctly interpreted the tone of this comment, you think my
criticism above was misdirected, overly-picky, pedantic, whatever.

I am unable to fathom this view. If the C routines were intended as
a "porting aid", surely it is crucial that they perform all the required
functions, albeit slowly. This way, the person rewriting them in 
assembler for their machine will actually know what they are supposed
to do... 

As you appear to be familiar with NeWS source code, you surely aren't
going to claim that the function of these routines is obvious from
the documentation, are you?

    Radford Neal