On Fri, 2006-17-11 at 08:05 -0500, jamal wrote: > i will review the doc as soon as i am done with that.
I glanced at the doc over lunch. I will give you high level views first and later on today or tomorrow i will give you a lot more pointed opinions. #1. I think the content layout has improved over the previous doc. So good stuff. Something still bothers me though; whether there is too much theory or verbosity (not that this long email has any of those characteristics;->). I am wondering if that affects usability. As a litmus test, what would be the answer to the question: "If i didnt know anything about generic netlink, how long do i need to spend and immediately start programming?" I dont think it is 5 minutes. Can we make it a 5 minute effort? I think this is partially my fault because thats how i laid out the original doc (and always is my style) - but you added more;-> Heres a thought: ** lay it out is to have two sections: I. A LinuxWay section (others call it genetic programming!) a) "heres an example for the kernel and heres the controller from user space" b) "heres what all different fields mean" II. Here are all the nitty gritty details your mother never told you. What this means is someone can immediately jump to Ia) do it the LinuxWay(tm). When in doubt will read Ib) and when in further doubt will read II. [Actually Andrew Morton contented that nobody needs more than section I when i first posted the doc]. I know this is a big change, so it will depend on how much time you have. I also think people may be happy with it in its current form. It would be nice to get feedback from someone who has used it. 2) Hey - you got rid of foobar[1] and googah ;-> I love those terms. No big deal - you own the doc now, so you can get away with things like that ;-> 3) Why not create a references section at the end and move all the references you have scattered every there instead? 4) Terminology is still confusing even to me. We most definetely need such a section. For example, I dont like the term "family" to descrive those boxes that sit in the kernel. But i dont know what else to call them. Also looking closely at Thomas' introduction of the thing called nla_policy - it really oughta have been called attribute "property". To add to this chaos - you introduced something you call a "channel". A little confusing although sounds right ;-> I think the previous doc had attempted something like a section on terms introduced by Balbir. But you may have gotten rid of it. 5) For registration of commands and families, you dont show the user handling return codes which could be errors. If this doc becomes scripture it could mean trouble. Just a cutnpaste from the original doc should suffice. 6) There is still a lot of "content" for theory mostly that is missing. I noticed you dont have async events, discovery etc. And there are still a few ideas i would like to discuss with Thomas and send patches for later. So keep me as a coauthor - it will keep me on the hook for now; i will bail out the moment i think it is complete. hope this helps. cheers, jamal [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
