Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!ziebmef!cks
From: cks@ziebmef.uucp (Chris Siebenmann)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: New RKM:AutoDocs & Includes  MAJOR problem!
Message-ID: <1989Mar19.024539.20730@ziebmef.uucp>
Date: 19 Mar 89 07:45:37 GMT
References: <1467@percival.UUCP> <6195@cbmvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: cks@ziebmef.UUCP (Chris Siebenmann)
Organization: Ziebmef Public Access Unix, Toronto, Ontario
Lines: 29


 There's two orthagonal issues involved; how the libraries take their
arguments, and how your compiler's stub functions (that call into the
libraries) take theirs. For better or worse, the job of the RKM is to
document how the libraries take their arguments, and in this context
they are completely correct. Draw() only does look at the low 16 bits
of some of its arguments. 

 Now we come to Lattice. In the early days, Lattice had 32-bit-wide
ints, so all arguments to functions were 32 bits wide, including
arguments to RKM stub functions, and people wrote code to this
assumption. 

 Now along comes Manx, with either 16 or 32 bit ints. They could have
chosen to define a new interface to the library functions, where
shorts actually were passed as shorts in 16-bit int mode (and thus
match the RKM descriptions), or maintain compatability with Lattice and
make all parameters to libraries 32 bits wide. For better or for worse,
they chose the latter, and lots of code has now been written that
uses that fact.

 As Dave Haynie says, all these problems will got away when people move
to function prototypes.

-- 
	"Though you may disappear, you're not forgotten here
	 And I will say to you, I will do what I can do"
Chris Siebenmann		uunet!{utgpu!moore,attcan!telly}!ziebmef!cks
cks@ziebmef.UUCP	     or	.....!utgpu!{,ontmoh!,ncrcan!brambo!}cks