Re: one more time on KDMKTONE

Janos Farkas (Janos.Farkas-#mSpUC/8upgPwfmnowEiAA6iv49i@shadow.banki.hu)
Fri, 15 Aug 1997 10:22:28 +0200


On 1997-08-14 at 16:09:55, Aaron Ucko wrote:
> miquels@cistron.nl (Miquel van Smoorenburg) writes:
> > Also, the "old" interface is compatible with what sysv does.. why change it?
>
> Um, NetHack's src/music.c indicates that VPIX, which I _assume_ to be
> an i386 SysV derivative, has a KDMKTONE ioctl that takes the
> frequency. I suppose the code would be wrong, but I'd expect somebody
> would have noticed by now were that the case.

Not that it would matter much :) but using frequency makes more sense to
me, than forcing every port of linux to use a maybe nonsensical "period"
value with respect to the IBM PC's timer hardware. Even if most sound
generating devices probably use some kind of "period" to specify the pitch.

However, changing this does not look too wise to me even for 2.1.
Why not simply make the historic version KDMKTONE_COMPAT? Then binary
compatibility was solved, and maybe some programs needing source
compatibility could use "#ifdef KDMKTONE_COMPAT use that, since Linux
changed the rules".

-- 
Janos - Don't worry, my address works.  I'm just bored of spam.