# Rect returned by Screen **URL:** \ **Category:** Uncategorized\ **Created:** [June 22, 2010, 11:24pm UTC](https://psychtoolbox.discourse.group/t/rect-returned-by-screen/773 "2010-06-22T23:24:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Allen\_Ingling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Allen\_Ingling](https://psychtoolbox.discourse.group/u/Allen_Ingling)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 11:24pm UTC](https://psychtoolbox.discourse.group/t/rect-returned-by-screen/773/1 "2010-06-22T23:24:03Z")
Having used PTB for years without ever encountering this issue, I'm wondering if I have missed something or am brain dead but ... The OpenWindow call to Screen returns a window pointer and a rect. [windowPtr,rect]=Screen('OpenWindow',windowPtrOrScreenNumber ...) Here is the paragraph of the documentation for the rect "rect" argument: "rect" is a 1x4 matrix containing the upper left and lower right coordinates of an imaginary box containing all the pixels. [Irrelevant text deleted here] Historically we've had two different orderings of the elements of rect, so, for general compatibility, all of the Psychophysics Toolbox refers to the elements symbolically, through RectLeft, RectTop, etc. Since 2/97, we use Apple's standard ordering: RectLeft=1, RectTop=2, RectRight=3, RectBottom=4. As I read the start of this paragraph, it says that the coordinates in the rect are ordered [upper left lower right] and that agrees with what I get when I run this on my system (running PTB 3.0.8). However, the end of the paragraph says that everything is standardized on the Apple standard with the ordering [left upper right lower]. So what this means is that the indices defined in PsychRects don't work with the rect returned by OpenWindow. Is this something that everyone else knows and I just missed? Is this really what's intended? The documentation certainly seems confusing to me at the very least. Ted Wright