Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!rws
From: rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Window sizes in X11R3
Message-ID: <9001111902.AA06105@expire.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 11 Jan 90 19:02:26 GMT
References: <486@mirsa.inria.fr>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 11


    why the Protocol (note the capital letter) does authorize 65536 pixels 
    for the window dimensions if the (32768 - DisplayHeight) bottom pixels
    can never be exposed ?

The Protocol defines the dimension values to be unsigned, since negative
values don't make sense.  A side-effect was to yield a 16-bit value space,
but that wasn't the objective.  It could well have explicitly specified the
maximum value of a dimension to be something smaller, but it doesn't.  Of
course, an implementation can always impose a smaller size if it wants to
(e.g. generate an Alloc error).