[comp.windows.x] Bad -geometry specifications are not complained about by anyone

jmsellens@watdragon.waterloo.edu (11/15/88)

From: "John M. Sellens" <jmsellens>

			  X Window System Bug Report
			    xbugs@expo.lcs.mit.edu




VERSION:
    R3

CLIENT MACHINE and OPERATING SYSTEM:
    Any

DISPLAY:
    Any

WINDOW MANAGER:
    Any

AREA:
    Xlib, toolkits

SYNOPSIS:
    Bad -geometry specifications are not complained about by anyone.

DESCRIPTION:
    Try a command with a bad geometry, as in
       xclock -geometry thisIsNotValid
    and you don't get any complaints.  I think this is because
    XParseGeometry() is not rigorous enough.  But I think this is
    indicative of a larger problem in the library.  Once you get to
    the point of trying to create a window, how do you signal this
    kind of error to the program and/or the user? You could try to
    print an error message, but you have no way to identify the
    error message.  This is a symptom of a much larger problem with
    both Xt and Xlib - the parsing is bad or non-existent.  No one
    flags an invalid command line.  Operations are begun before the
    command line is correctly parsed.

REPEAT BY:
    See above.

SAMPLE FIX:
    ??  It doesn't seem to be an easy thing to solve correctly.
    But I hope I'm wrong.