Problem with $DISPLAY

[Chris Jones]

On 13/10/14 15:09, René J.V. Bertin wrote:
> On Monday October 13 2014 14:34:15 Chris Jones wrote:
>
>>>> Any scripts that make any assumptions on what $DISPLAY looks like are
>>>> flawed by designed...
>
>> My argument is not based on what some standard says about what DISPLAY
>> should or should look like, but the basic premise that extracting
>> information from $DISPLAY is just a bad idea and should be avoided.
>
> In other words, you mean that *you consider* assumptions on $DISPLAY's information content to be design flaws, it's not a universal truth.

Clearly its my opinion, as I stated it. Apologies if that was not obvious.

> As long as there is documentation that's not contradicted/superseded by more recent/authoritative documents and that states that the 1st element of $DISPLAY refers to the X server host, using that information in code may not be the most future-proof way of doing things, but it might be the only way of doing things.

On the other hand, even if it did not exist (and I have no time to 
search, or interest in doing so) the absence of such documentation does 
*not* make the documents you quoted the absolute definition of the 
standard. Xorg's view as Brandon has already stated is a very biased 
view towards the way things are in Linux-land.

Chris