🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <130368@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes:
> Why do people use the serial.device and not SER: ? The reason is fairly
> simple, because the handler doesn't do what most people want to do with
> a serial device, which is 

Which is not relevant. The default serial device is "serial.device",0. In
fact, a well behaved terminal program should have requestors that allow you
to change that.

> You are absolutely correct, devices do have names but no one is arguing
> that file requesters should put up "trackdisk.device", "harddisk.device"
> as selections.

If you have a generic format program, why not?

[ Lots of stuff about improving the handler-level interface ]

That's *also* a good idea, but in the existing world a modem program that
doesn't allow you to specify things in the currently available name space
is just plain broken. That's all.

Oh yes, a modem program really shouldn't be busy-waiting on the serial
port, as you describe. That's IBM-PC style stuff... busy-waiting is not
acceptable on the Amiga. And there's no way to wait on two file handles
at once (Hey, Commodore, how about making asynchronous I/O to handlers
roek in 1.4?), so you have to go down to the DoIO level for an efficient
terminal program anyway.

> and ASDG can just deliver their drivers and tell users "To use our
> port, set your preferences selection for the serial device to WhizBang"
> And the application will automatically pick up the new serial device.

Yeh? And what happens if I want to run two modem programs at once, on two
lines? I've needed to do that badly enough that I wrote a dual-port split-
screen modem program for the IBM-PC.

> Once you get people using the name of the handler, you can actually make
> it into a full fledged name space if you chose.

We *have* a full-fledged name space. device name and unit number uniquely
identifies a port. Now what you *really* need is a "ROOT:" device and a packet
you can send to a handler to return the underlying device so you can DoIO
to your heart's content.

And there *are* existing modem programs that support underlying devices.
-- 
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva <peter@sugar.hackercorp.com>
`-_-'
 'U`  "I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere"