discuss: Serial-Programming-HOWTO
Subject:
Serial-Programming-HOWTO
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
18 Jun 2004 20:22:15 -0000
Message-Id: <20040618201823.GA891@davespc>
This HOWTO is dated Jan. 1998. In 2001, it was taken over by Gary
Frerking and converted to DocBook but the text is still all as written
in 1997. The tragedy is that in 1999 Vern Hoxie revised it, but refused
to submit it due to the discussion on the list where some were
suggesting that DocBook be required and that people would need to use
CVS. This never happened at LDP and I explained that to him later but he
still wouldn't submit it. He didn't like LinuxDoc either although
that's what he wrote it in.
Vern Hoxie started from scratch and redid the HOWTO, leaving out some of
the advanced examples in the original, but offering a much better
explanation of basic concepts which were often omitted from the
original. I think the Hoxie's version is significantly better than the
original. I discussed with him why he left out advanced topics and he
implied that they could be learned elsewhere and would just require too
much explanation. I think he's likely right but I still think that some
of the material in the original needs to be incorporated in the HOWTO.
So in Mar. 2003, I wrote this list and Gary F. about the fact that
nothing had been done to merge these HOWTOs. Gary F. said he would try
to find time to merge them, etc. But as of today it still hasn't been
done. So 5 years have passed since Verne Hoxie's revision and it still
hasn't been incorporated into Serial Programming.
Another complication is that Vern Hoxie not only rewrote the HOWTO but
rewrote the man page "termios" which is needed for the HOWTO. But I
just checked the current man page as supplied by Debian and apparently
his man page was never accepted as the man page. So should LDP have a
HOWTO which is actually a man page to replace (or clarify) an existing
man page? Probably not. I guess it should be included in the
Serial-Programming-HOWTO, with the suggestion that the info in it be
merged into the man page: termios.
So what to do now? I only have very limited knowlege of serial
programming and wrote a couple of simple programs about 20 years ago.
So I'm not qualified to merge these HOWTOs. For example, Vern H. say to
try to avoid using the select() system call while the original says to
use it. I'm not qualified to evaluate this point as I've never used
select(). And I just don't have the time to learn this material. So
I'll ask on the serial mailing list if anyone wants to take on the task
of merging and updating this HOWTO.
David Lawyer
