🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3382@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
[ this new serial-device stuff is a kludge ]

In article <15154@oberon.USC.EDU>, papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) doesn't
see the problem with it...

In article <3385@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
> They want everyone's serial devices to become part of an all-singing
> all-dancing serial device, as far as programs are concerned. That is,
> Perry's siosbx.device (I think that's the name) would show up as ports
> 1-4 of serial.device. Unless they also have FooCom's 2-port board and it
> happens to autoconfigure first, in which case they become ports 3-7...
> -- 
> Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva  `-_-'  Hackercorp.
> ...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net      'U`

From my reading of the spec, it seems more like venders have two
options, first of all, they can supply their own serial.device (with a
different name of course) and have software get configured to look for
that device and a particular device number.  Fine.  If you don't like
the standard you can do it the "old" way and be perfectly conforming.

The second method is to, yes, become part of the all-singing,
all-dancing serial.device.  You WOULD know which ports are going to be
which software devices because it seems that Preferences will get
expanded to allow you to map numbers to devices.  That means that I can
set up:
	0 -- built-in serial port (to assure compatability)
	1 -- built-in serial port (unused but remapped)
	2 -- JoeBlow serial device 3
	3 -- ASDG serial device 1
	4 -- JoeBlow serial device 1
	5 -- ASDG serial device 2

This would be really nice as far as I can tell.  In fact, it would
permit me to set up my software and then have the OS do the mapping to
the proper board/port depending on what *I* want, rather than the way
that they autoconfig.  If I pull out a board and replace it, my
software is all configured to serial.device port 0 thru N and I just
have to change preferences.  In fact, I'd like device mapping to be
done for almost every physical device. :-)

Wow.  I just realized how nice this will be.  I can take a program
that I'm using and move it to a different machine and not need to
reconfigure it because I can do all that through preferences.  In
fact, I can reduce the mapping if I convince all my friends to put
their modems on device 10-19, all their plotters on 20-29, all their
serial printers on 30-39, etc.

Hmmmmm......
-- 
 Tom Limoncelli -- tlimonce@drunivac.Bitnet -- limonce@pilot.njin.net
            Drew University -- Madison, NJ -- 201-408-5389
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er.