Re: Pseudoterminal terminology in POSIX

From: Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
To: Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@netbsd.org>
Cc: Larry Dwyer <larryd.kbd@gmail.com>,
	Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>,
	linux-man <linux-man@vger.kernel.org>,
	Geoff Clare <gwc@opengroup.org>,
	austin-group-l@opengroup.org, Andrew Josey <ajosey@opengroup.org>,
	libc-alpha <libc-alpha@sourceware.org>,
	Elliot Hughes <enh@google.com>,
	Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com>
Subject: Re: Pseudoterminal terminology in POSIX
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2020 16:20:00 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CALxWeYo=h6D3GDrGVLER7amw8S1XoVq2KuDT9u_D=zV3oDreDg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200811115121.GA29807@panix.com>

On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:51 PM Thor Lancelot Simon via austin-group-l
at The Open Group <austin-group-l@opengroup.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 10:31:58AM +0200, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
> > On 8/10/20 3:58 PM, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> > > On Sat, Aug 08, 2020 at 04:18:10PM -0700, Larry Dwyer via austin-group-l at The Open Group wrote:
> > >> How about the "control" side and the "terminal" side (of the paired device
> > >> files)?
> > >
> > > How about the "pty side" and the "tty side"?  It seems hard to be more
> > > neutral than that and we can be sure there is no ambiguity.
> >
> > This is an option that came up in the glibc/Linux man-pages discussion.
> > My objection is that I want proper nouns that one can use in a prose
> > description of pseudoterminals.
>
> All names are proper nouns.
>
> They might not be the particular proper nouns that we're used to seeing,
> but they are still proper nouns!

Let me clarify then: my preference is to have natural language nouns,
words that a speaker who was unfamiliar with the domain would know (or
could reasonably guess) how to pronounce when reading them.

Thanks,

Michael