Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!DECWRL.DEC.COM!haynes
From: haynes@DECWRL.DEC.COM
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Fixes to paint and xedit in V11.2
Message-ID: <8707280329.AA01894@vulcan.dec.com>
Date: Tue, 28-Jul-87 00:20:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: vulcan.8707280329.AA01894
Posted: Tue Jul 28 00:20:01 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Jul-87 02:25:00 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: world
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 31

Being one of the primary designers and implementors of the "Xt"
toolkit, I'd like to respond to the recent rash of criticisms of null
pointer handling in the toolkit.

First, please do recognize the distinction between the applications
(clients) and the toolkit itself. The bugs that Jordan and Ed reported
were both in clients (xedit and paint). I can't control what other
people do with our code.

Second, I don't know of any places in the toolkit that allow passing
NULL to the string routines. If any such exist they are bugs. PLEASE
REPORT THEM!!! We can't fix bugs that we never see! I have see NO that
is NOT ONE bug report from the people complaining about null handling
in the toolkit. You want to gripe, or you want to be helpful? Send your
bug reports to Todd at athena, and they'll get sent to the right people.

By the way, passing a null string as a command label is illegal.
Programs that do this should die (and will on a 68k). You can argue
whether or not this is good, but that's the intended behavior. So the
fact that we blithely pass such strings to strcmp etc. is not evidence
of our VAX/Unix chauvinism, it's evidence of our laxness in
documentation. Which flaw I freely admit and unashamedly ask for help
with! Any of you kind folks out there willing to DONATE time to help us
write toolkit documentation? After all, I'm personally making big bucks
sitting here answering mail about the toolkit...

	"If you can't make 'em fix it..."

grrr...

	-- Charles