Pseudoterminal terminology (was Re: Rename "master" branch to "main"?)

[Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)]

On 7/28/20 5:32 PM, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Michael Kerrisk:
> 
>> Those names (parent, child) do seem strange to me. With process
>> creation, those terms make a kind of sense.
> 
> Not really: it's rare that a subprocess does not exit before the process
> that launched it.
> 
>> The simplicity of it is appealing. But, how does this read in
>> prose documentation. Do we replace actual English words with 
>> abbreviations ("pty", "tty")? That looks a little weird in writing, 
>> and seems weirder when spoken aloud. And then: "the pseudoterminal
>> pty device" seems a little bit like something I might find in
>> "The Department of Redundancy Dept"...
> 
> Maybe we can use “pseudoterminal device” and “terminal device”?

So, the proposed terminology would be:

* pseudoterminal device pair
* pseudoterminal device (formerly: master)
* terminal device (formerly: slave)

?

It's an interesting idea. I like the concept, but I'd want to
see how it looks in rewritten manual pages. I'll take a look.

Thanks,

MIchael

-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/