| I'd suggest that, if you want to be able to ask a server about what fontset
it supports, you use a query intended to do precisely that, or ask for one
to be added. There is plenty of experience that shows that version number
checks are the WRONG way to do this sort of thing. For example in DAP,
people have tied all sorts of things to version number and OS identifier
data in the protocol. The result was that many features would not work
across versions, or across operating systems, simply because the check
that was done produced a mismatch.
The correct way: when you need to know if the other end can do XYZ, ask it
if it can. If it says Yes, believe it. Don't assume that no one is capable
of doing XYZ unless they are running version N, or operating system V.
paul
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| re .1
Thanks for the good advice, I will point the customer to the Font Routines
section of the Xlib reference manual which documents all kinds of routines
for getting information on available fonts.
re .0
...but, IS there any way to find the release number of a decwindows server?
It seems that if there are calls to find out the major and minor versions,
there should also be a way to find out which release it is. This guy is asking
that I report the fact that the XVendorRelease call returns an 11 as a bug.
Thanks,
Jeff
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| The problem is that according to the gurus that be, the protocol has not changed
since R1. Now we all know that is a little white lie, but not completely. A
few interpretations have changed; the actual features of the MIT server have
changed; the fonts have changed; there are different extensions available.
However, the fact remains that there have been no changes to the protocol minor
rev number since MIT R1 when it became 11,0.
I would further add, that MIT Rn is not especially defined. That is, we can't
really look at our (VMS) server and say that this "conforms" to MIT Rn. For
example, in VMS V5.4, we can say that we have all the fonts that R4 has (and
more), plus we have the Display PostScript extension which R4 does not have, but
we don't have backing store, which R4 does have. What release number would we
call it? We most assuredly do conform to the X11 Protocol, which does not say
what fonts or extensions must be available, and says that backing store is
optional.
The vendor string is entirely owned by us, and for the most part, we should
use it to say stuff like "VMS V5.2" or whatever; some indication of our own
release number. If we are not doing that, that is a reasonable SPR. However,
don't ask us to put in the MIT Release number. As I mentioned above, if you
are not distributing the MIT release, you can't really say what release number it
is!
Burns
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