however(char *discussion_topic) {
	can_of_worms_t *(*discussion())();
	return (*discussion->open(discussion_topic);
}

On Sat, 3 Oct 1998, Todd Whitesel wrote:

 * > That's always seemed either like "magic" numbers, or inappripriate
 * > overloading to me.  It's one thing to have a "convention" where a
 * > certain slice represents the entire physical device, but yet another
 * > thing entirely to encode that convention into the driver.  I'd much
 * > rather see another minor number used to represent the raw disk,
 * > especially since there's no big shortage of them any more.
 * 
 * Ooh, I would love to see this. I've always hated the "in-band" characteristic
 * of the 'c' and 'd' conventions. It would provide an MI-acceptable way of
 * getting these things out of the partition table, so that we could use the
 * same device names on all ports without worrying.

It's _not_ in-band, though.  It's in this thing called the "partition
table".

In the case of the i386 port, though, since by convention, b, c, and d
are reserved partitions, this leaves only five partitions available.


#ifdef RISK
however("partitions per disk, partition table sizes");
#endif RISK

...speaking of which, I remember distinctly something really nice
about OSx on the Pyramid 9800 series:  the partition tables, though
still hardwired, had 16, rather than 8 partitions per disk.  I know
various PROMware, whose manufacturers (like Sun) shall go nameless, make
various assumptions along the lines that "All disks have 8 partitions",
but this is a topic that has been discussed but not fully addressed.
I know der Mouse has come up with his own solution to this problem (hiya,
Mouse!).

				--*greywolf;
--
Friends don't let friends use Microsoft.