Re: [RFC PATCH] Replacing "master-slave" terminology for pseudoterminals - Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)

From: "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
To: enh <enh@google.com>, Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com>
Cc: mtk.manpages@gmail.com,
	"libc-alpha@sourceware.org" <libc-alpha@sourceware.org>,
	linux-man <linux-man@vger.kernel.org>,
	Zack Weinberg <zackw@panix.com>,
	Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>,
	Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>,
	Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com>,
	Linux API <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] Replacing "master-slave" terminology for pseudoterminals
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 09:48:34 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <c756202e-7af8-c1b4-e99f-d77f3eae8c09@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAJgzZoqR4Vh0phZjrDB9dgxNPzH0a35YjC1CwKb3mREOFn5Kbg@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Elliot,

On 7/30/20 10:35 PM, enh wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 4:38 AM Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 7/30/20 5:16 AM, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
>>> I know what you mean. One reason for that verbosity is the need to
>>> clearly distinguish "pseudoterminal device/end" from "pseudoterminal
>>> device pair". It's hard to avoid being wordy there.
>>
>> The perfect is the enemy of the good. My feeling is that as others
>> write this text in emails or discussions, we'll eventually all settle
>> on some other short form we find agreeable and then later we can adjust
>> the man pages to use that.
> 
> based on my own brief experience, i'm expecting that _code_ will
> settle on pty and tty. but if you're reading the man pages to
> understand the concepts -- which are inherently quite confusing -- i
> think spelling things out in longhand might remain useful in that
> context.
> 
>> Until then taking the lead to change this
>> language is the correct way forward.
> 
> yeah, definitely.
> 
> i'd prefer for michael to go first -- since the bionic documentation
> is basically just a link to man7.org, and even without that he's the
> canonical source -- but i'm happy to go first and submit my change
> first if it helps us make progress :-)

I'd prefer to take this a little slowly. I don't plan to merge the
changes just yet. I'm interested to get a bit more feedback first,
including from Zack. (I'm guessing Zack is on holiday or so, which 
is why we've not heard from him.) Also, if we have rough consensus
on this change, I would like to raise it with the POSIX folk; it
would of course be great if there was a corresponding change in the
standard, so that we all (all UNIX) have a common set of reference
terms.

Cheers,

Michael

-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/