Subject: Re: atppc(4) is misnamed
To: None <bjh21@NetBSD.org>
From: M. Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 02/05/2004 08:06:06
In message: <Pine.SOL.4.58.0402051106190.2814@draco.cus.cam.ac.uk>
            Ben Harris <bjh21@NetBSD.org> writes:
: This is a trivial issue, but it'll irritate me forever if I don't raise it
: now.  The atppc(4) driver is misnamed, since the interface it drives was
: introduced for the IBM PC, not the PC/AT.  I think it should be renamed to
: pcppc(4) now, before too many people get it stuck in their kernel
: configuration files.  It's not so much the inaccuracy that bothers me as
: the fact that someone was clearly trying to be clever in naming the device
: and _got it wrong_.

There's also a parallel port controller in the NEC PC-9801 and PC-9821
series of computers.  Would you call that pc98ppc or necppc?  Many
people involved in the Japanese pc98 community tend to draw the line
between the NEC machines and the IBM machines at the IBM-AT even
though the IBM PC was just as incompatible with the NEC PC-98x1
machines.

I'm suggesting that NetBSD take a similar approach to naming.  One
could easily go back beyond the IBM PC for examples of things like
floppy controlers, UARTs and the like and I'm not sure pin-pointing
exactly where things came from that far back is useful.

But having said that, I'm easy either way.

Warner