Notes about documentation, checking in:

o the first line of a doc string should be a brief synopsis sentence.  This
is in keeping with Emacs tradition, and the synopses are used in overviews
and treated slightly specially in places.

o be sure to mention all formal argument names in the doc string;  in
particular, running "rm -f scwm.sgml; make scwm.sgml" from doc/ will
verify that this has been done (tries to ensure reasonably complete 
documentation -- minimally users need to know what each formal is supposed
to contain... those descriptions usually come after the synopsis line).

o when you do check in, be sure to add a change log entry.  Emacs has
add-change-log-entry which works great if you use it from the file and
function in which you made the change.  If you're not using pcl-cvs mode 
to do your CVS updates, consider it -- it works pretty well, and is a
lot nicer than the command line or even the vc-mode keybindings.


Other files to read:

* naming-conventions

* smobs

* dynamic-modules

* common-primitive-mistakes

* guile-gc-notes

* hungarian-tags

--09/16/98 gjb


o when creating a new global (only if absolutely necessary, of
course), use the EXTERN mechanism; declare it only in the appropriate
.h file, with either EXTERN or EXTERN_SET; this will initialize it in
the corresponding .c file only.  If the .c/.h pair doesn't currently
have any globals, #define filename_IMPLEMENTATION at the top of the .c
file and copy and modify the #undef EXTERN... block from another .h
file.

o Explore the X tools you may not have used before; xev can show
events going to a window, xprop can watch property changes,
xwindowinfo will show all sorts of useful information.

o Xnest isn't perfect, but is usually a better alternative than trying
to debug the WM running your development environment.  Another
alternative is to run a second X server; on Linux for example, "X :1"
will start a second server, running on the next available VC.  "scwm
-d :1" will then start scwm running on it.

--09/23/98 jtl