From owner-freebsd-hackers  Tue Mar 21 14:14:56 1995
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To: jbryant@server.iadfw.net
cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: Problems with 2940 and 950210snap 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 21 Mar 95 15:46:52 CST."
             <199503212146.PAA23793@server.iadfw.net> 
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 14:14:54 -0800
Message-ID: <5780.795824094@freefall.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@freefall.cdrom.com>
Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> > Wrong.  mt & st are control commands.  ft should vanish into the device
> > driver itself.
> 
> Exactly what do you mean by that?  I have been hacking a FULLY QIC compat 
> backup/restore [i.e., QIC-40/80, and 113 style filesets] program for some 
> time now for FreeBSD.  Would such a change in any way effect my work?

I mean that having both a device driver (/dev/ft0) and a special
user-agent for dealing with it (ft) violates the UNIX principle of
least surprise.  I should be able to do:

	tar cvf /dev/ft0 <some path>

And have it just work.  The fact that /dev/rst0 and /dev/rmt0 both do
this only leads the new user further down the garden path.

Actually, I think if you do a tar cvf /dev/ft0 at this point you will
panic your system!  Not quite user-friendly enough yet! :-)

					Jordan