Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU!RWS
From: RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: XDrawText in Xlib
Message-ID: <19880711123953.6.RWS@KILLINGTON.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 11 Jul 88 12:39:00 GMT
References: <8807100049.AA24660@gr.ardent.com>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 16


    Date: Sat, 9 Jul 88 17:49:03 PDT
    From: ardent!mlp@uunet.uu.net (Mark Patrick)

    It appears that XDrawText generates different sized requests based on this
    value!!  Although the problem was in the client program and not in Xlib
    or the X server I have a hard time in understanding why the delta value
    is not simply passed on to the server but rather affects the size of
    the request.

Go look at the protocol encoding.  In the encoding, the delta value is
only 8 bits (signed).  The small range keeps the encoding compact, and
covers all normal cases, while still allowing for chained elements to
represent larger values.  The Xlib interface has a favor built in; it
allows you to specify large deltas, and automatically converts them into
chains as necessary.