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From: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Does anyone have a fix for R4/PL1 XGetDefault?
Message-ID: <49225@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 19 Feb 90 21:21:02 GMT
References: <47970@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <9002191921.AA01528@expire.lcs.mit.edu>
Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV
Reply-To: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lines: 47

| From: rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler)
| 
|     Under R4, XGetDefault doesn't work 100%.
| 
| Yes, it does (modulo the bug in the prototype declaration).
| 
|     If you attempt to do an XGetDefault(dpy, prog, "foo.bar"), XGetDefault
|     won't break the string "foo.bar" up into separate ``Quarks'' and
|     therefore won't match the desired resource.
| 
| That's correct.  XGetDefault is *not supposed* to handle multi-level
| resources, it was only designed to handle single-level resources.  I
| suspect it is largely by accident that abuse of it worked in R3.
| 
|     I've got a bug report in to MIT, but I don't know when we'll see a
|     fix from them.
| 
| I don't think you'll see one from us, since it isn't considered a bug.

  Well piss me off!  Why the hell didn't someone answer this way
sooner?!  I thought I wasn't seeing a response from someone in authority
because they didn't have the time for the fix.  How long would it have
taken you to write this response a month ago when I first asked?  (Note
that you're responding to my second posting.)

  Now I've gone and implemented a ``fix'' for XGetDefault that's not
compatible with what you describe as Proper Behavior.  That time has now
been wasted and I still need to come up with a fix for awm that makes
sense.  And as I maintain almost a hundred machines running on four
different architectures, it will now take me three days to just back out
the XGetDefault change.

  As for Proper Behavior: DOCUMENT IT DAMN IT!!!  There is no explicit
mention of this ``Proper Behavior'' in the XGetDefault manual page.  And
it should be pointed out that this is a particularly non-useful
definition of Proper Behavior.  It sure as hell isn't consistent with the
other resource routines which do break up multi-level name
specifications.  What is the rationale for not supporting multi-level
resource names in XGetDefault??  Are you simply trying to discourage its
use?  If so, mark it as deprecated in the manual page!

  I don't know what the hell I'm going to do for awm now.  I'll probably
have to do some weird-ass dynamic building of XtResourceList's ...  What
a pain.

Pissed off,
Casey