Re: Pseudoterminal terminology in POSIX

["Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.lists@gmail.com>]

[again restoring the CC]

On 8/5/20 5:28 PM, Paul Smith via austin-group-l at The Open Group wrote:
> On Wed, 2020-08-05 at 08:00 -0700, Donn Terry via austin-group-l at The
> Open Group wrote:
>> The suggestions here so far are cumbersome and tend to be ambiguous. 
>> The old m-word and sl-word, and also "client" and "server" could
>> potentially be interpreted backwards from the conventional intent.
>> (You can think about it as the sl-word/client actually being in
>> control: telling the m-word/server what it's supposed to be doing,
>> e.g. "execute this command line".)  
>>
>> How about "provider" and "consumer"? "Pseudoterminal provider" and
>> "...consumer" seem (at least to me) to be unambiguous in terms of the
>> reversal above, (reasonably) clear in meaning, and politically
>> neutral. Have the other discussions not shown here considered this?
> 
> To me even "provider" / "consumer" still has this issue: do you
> consider the pseudoterminal as providing to the terminal, or the
> terminal as providing to the pseudoterminal.  Both seem legitimate
> enough interpretations to create confusion.

That was my immediate thought also, unfortunately. That said,
again, I think if we settle on a terminology (even provider/consumer),
people will adapt. (But, i still prefer pseudoterminal/terminal or
ancillary/primary).

> To remove ambiguity perhaps we need to think about the attributes that
> are unique to each element of the pair and use that in the term, for
> example "backend" / "frontend".
> 
> This would have to be introduced, something like "a pseudoterminal
> device pair consists of a backend terminal device and a frontend
> pseudoterminal device".

Yes. The terminology, whatever it is, needs to be introduced and 
defined. That alone will remove a lot of ambiguity, regardless of
the terms that are settled on.

Thanks,

Michael