Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!mordor!joyce!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!ATHENA.MIT.EDU!swick
From: swick@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ralph R. Swick)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Xtk "unsigned int" typedefs considered harmful
Message-ID: <8809122025.AA00876@LYRE.MIT.EDU>
Date: 12 Sep 88 20:24:57 GMT
References: <6289@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: DEC/MIT Project Athena
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Well, that's C for ya.

You're quite correct; there will soon be lots of bugs lurking around,
especially in your code.  Nowhere in the specification does it say
that you may assume Dimensions and Positions are of any particular
size.

If you want to write portable C code, you will have to use the (opaque)
definitions of Dimension, Position and Cardinal and do the appropriate
casts to get signed arithmetic where you want it.  It is quite possible
that the spec should give a larger warning to C programmers.