Subject: flat /dev, fd names

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 02 Apr 92 13:17:33 BST

Some discussion has been going on about the format of the /dev
directory.  Two notes thus far have surprised me by saying that
the presence of subdirectories under /dev would break many
programs.  I am surprised at this, since most of the systems I
use have subdirectories under /dev, and I don't know of any
program that I ported that objected.
 
/dev can be a mess, particularly if we expect it to contain
all legal device names.  Once you start having scads of pseudo
terminals for various purposes, floppy disks, hard disks, etc,
it becomes difficult to find things in the directory, and
directory listings become too unwieldy.  The existing software
which refers to /dev a great deal will surely be compilable
on other systems which do not have 'flat' /dev, if it is written
at all portably.  And surely the fundamental commands are those
which are most likely to mess about with /dev/xxx; as long as
we keep, e.g., /dev/tty, we shouldn't have any big problems.
 
Recently I wrote a note to this list which suggested a naming scheme
for floppy disks.  As this note seems to have disappeared (it will
probably appear here tomorrow), let me repeat the suggestion.
 
The name of a floppy disk device (at least in 'flat' /dev) would be
fd[drive][density][disksize], where [drive] is 0-3, [density] is
'd', 'q', or 'h', and [disksize] is '3' or '5'.  This seems to me
better than the fd[drive][codeletter] scheme, since I would have
as much difficulty remembering the code letters as I have now
with the hopeless Minix names.
 
     -- Owen
     [email-masked]

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From: Chuck Boyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 92 08:22:43 -0800

What's terribly wrong with 
/dev/at0
/dev/xt0
/dev/at1
/dev/xt1
for 'beginner's' it makes 'sense.' My point is that for everyone
else (hackers, programmers...etc.) they know enough, are smart
enough to change things, and it's not that big of a hastle. 'But'
for beginners, and explaining to beginners, logic, simple, at/xt
seems the 'obvious' choice. fd1h5 is okay too I guess, I concede,
but it's not so transparent... it's okay though.
chuck

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 92 16:46:44 +0200

Date: Thu, 02 Apr 92 13:17:33 BST
   From: [email-masked]
   Myname: A. V. Le Blanc

Yes, everybody agrees that the Minux convention is brain dead, but
I don't like your surgestion. Nobody uses density to destinguish
formats anymore as you could easily have different formats with
the same density. Instead I would prefer devicenames that included
some more meaningful information of the format, such as XXX1440,
XXX1200, or something likewise.

/Tommy Thorn