Q: AtkTextIface get_text offset arguments are not as expected

["Grant Gayed" <Grant_Gayed ca ibm com>]

Context: I'm running on RH8.0, with
gnome 2.2 desktop and gnopernicus talking through festival in the background.

I've defined a type that implements the AtkText interface, and it is receiving
callbacks as expected.  But when its get_text method is invoked the
start_offset and end_offset argument values are huge (ie.- they look like
pointers).  Shouldn't these values just be position offsets within
the text being returned (eg.- 0 and 5 would be a request for the first
6 characters)?  Or am I reading the doc wrong here?

Thanks in advance, 
Grant