Datatypes in the .swi files

[Jan-Jaap van der Geer]

Hello,

I am modifying DefMod to generate bindings for the Vala programming
language. While doing that I found some entries that I find
surprising. Does anyone have an idea about if these are actually
correct?

CONST
   Wimp_NoFonts = .Ref Byte: -1,             //for Wimp_LoadTemplate

Shouldn't that be .Ref .Byte or even .Ref .Data?

Same here:

SWI Wimp_LoadTemplate =
   (  NUMBER 0x400DB "Loads a template",
      ENTRY
      (  R1 = .Ref Wimp_Window: window "pointer to buffer for
 template, or Wimp_GetSize to return required buffer size",
         R2 = .Ref .String: data,
         R3 -> .Char: end,
         R4 = .Ref Byte: font_ref,
                   ^^^^  
         R5 = .Ref .String: name "pointer to a (wildcarded) name
 to match (must be 12 bytes word-aligned)",
         R6 = .Int: context
      ),
      EXIT
      (  R0?,
         R1 = .Int: used,
         R2 = .Int: data_used,
         R6! = .Int: context_out
   )  );


This one I find strange as well:

SWI WimpClaimFreeMemory_Alloc =
   (  NUMBER 0x400EE,
      ENTRY
      (  R0 # 1  "Claims the whole of the Wimp's free memory pool for the
               	  calling task - Deprecated under Risc OS 3.7+",
         R1 = .Int: size
      ),
      EXIT
      (  R0?,
         R1 = .Int: size_out,
         R2! = .Ref Void: blk
                    ^^^^
   )  );

I would have changed the .Ref Void there to .Ref .Byte but of
course that would change the datatype for WimpClaimFreeMemory_Alloc
(may not a big problem for a deprecated SWI?)

As far as I understand, datatypes that do not start with a dot are
datatypes that should be defined elsewhere. Byte and Void are not.
Naming standards within C mean that they get converted to lowercase
and therefore they work just fine.

At this moment I am not doing that for Vala (maybe I should but I
am so far being pigheaded so I'm not doing that just yet). The
result is that I end up with unknown datatypes (Byte and Void).

I tried exchanging the .Ref Byte with .Ref .Byte above, and the
generated .h code remains the same (haven't checked the others).
The same is true when I change it to .Ref .Data (which I feel is
even better).

Does this make sense? Or am I missing something?

Cheers,
Jan-Jaap