Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:56:27 +0100 From: Marius Strobl <marius@alchemy.franken.de> To: Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org> Cc: nick@van-laarhoven.org, "M. Warner Losh" <imp@bsdimp.com>, current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: mk48txx Message-ID: <20061212015627.GL86517@alchemy.franken.de> In-Reply-To: <457E034A.7080103@samsco.org> References: <20061209185539.GA34399@alchemy.franken.de> <20061209201438.B42195@localhost> <20061209210629.GG86517@alchemy.franken.de> <20061210.231137.-1749707382.imp@bsdimp.com> <20061212005753.GJ86517@alchemy.franken.de> <457E034A.7080103@samsco.org>
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On Mon, Dec 11, 2006 at 06:18:02PM -0700, Scott Long wrote: > Marius Strobl wrote: > >On Sun, Dec 10, 2006 at 11:11:37PM -0700, M. Warner Losh wrote: > >>In message: <20061209210629.GG86517@alchemy.franken.de> > >> Marius Strobl <marius@alchemy.franken.de> writes: > >>: > >>: I favor having no man page over having something incomplete > >>: or inadequate like f.e. esp.4 or bus_space.9 as IMO wrong > >>: information can confuse way more and leaves a worse impression > >>: than no information at all. > >> > >>bus_space.9 isn't incomplete. The problem is that it is too complete > >>and general, if anything. It is hard to penetrate. > > > >I mentioned bus_space.9 as an example of a man page that I'd > >describe as inadequate; both the sections about mapping and > >unmapping as well as allocating and freeing bus space are > >still verbatim from the NetBSD rev. 1.9 one AFAICT, which > >describes concepts in these sections that don't really apply > >to FreeBSD. Granted, on some platforms like FreeBSD/i386 > >one can probably succeed in doing actual reads and writes > >by only using the functions mentioned in bus_space.9, but > >it totally fails to give the slightest hint (not even a .Xr) > >on how to obtain the bus space tag and handle the right way > >in FreeBSD, so it will actually work on all platforms, which > >is the whole point of the bus_space interface. The current > >bus_space.9 actually tells that some of its sections "may or > >may not apply to the FreeBSD version" and "many parts of the > >interface are unspecified", but that's essentially telling > >the user that she/he has to figure it out herself/himself, > >which IMO defeats the purpose of having a man page in the > >first place. > > > >Marius > > > > Hate to say it, but these things don't fix themselves. If you're hoping > to shame Warner into fixing it, I think that his free time is quite > spoken for. No, that absolutely wasn't my intention. I originally just wanted to express that I prefer to add good man pages from the beginning instead of something that I can't honestly describe as useable and appropriate myself (and judging the notes Warner added to bus_space.9 I think he feels similarly about that man page; if not I apologise). Note that originally this was also about the missing man page for the API of a driver that I did touch but not initially add. That didn't keep me from doing a man page in the past but my time is limited also. Marius
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