On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 10:18 PM, Jonathan Cameron <ji...@kernel.org> wrote: > On 24/10/14 23:31, Hartmut Knaack wrote: >> Daniel Baluta schrieb am 09.10.2014 14:39: >>> From: Irina Tirdea <irina.tir...@intel.com> >>> >>> These changes are needed to support the functionality of a pedometer. >>> A pedometer has two basic functionalities: step counter and step detector. >>> >>> The step counter needs to be enabled and then it will count the steps >>> in its hardware register. Whenever the application needs to check >>> the step count, it will read the step counter register. To support the >>> step counter a new channel type STEPS is added. Since the pedometer needs >>> to be enabled first so that the hardware can count and store the steps, >>> we need a specific ENABLE channel info mask. >>> >>> The step detector will generate an interrupt each time a step is detected. >>> To support this functionality we add a new event type INSTANCE. >>> >> Hi, >> I was wondering, if it would be better to name this channel somehow more >> generic. What you are actually counting are some pulses, and only the >> implementation of the hardware leads to the interpretation of these pulses >> as for example steps. >> Other devices for this category would be pulse counters - either stand >> alone, or as part of SoCs. Some use cases I could think of are: liquid/gas >> flow measurements, engine rotation/RPM counts, object counts, ... >> Any opinions? > > I agree there might be potential here for a broader interface... RPM > however > would be a rotational speed measurement and hence in radians / second or > radians if just a count of pulses off an encoder. > > We have just recently had a human pulse counter as well which is another > count. > > The question to my mind is do we gain anything by making it more generic? > Does it help userspace? Chances of having many applications that don't care > about the difference between steps and other pulse counts is probably low > so right now I'm (slightly) falling on the side of have these more specific > counts. > > So what does everyone else think?
I think making this more generic might confuse the users. Having this more specific makes the interface very clear about who should use it. Daniel. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
