[Nut-upsdev] Usage of 'alarm_(init|set|commit)'

[Arnaud Quette]

2007/8/10, Arjen de Korte <nut+devel at de-korte.org>:
> ...
> > as always, I'm all for standardizing, and I'm sure that something can
> > be done for the alarm names (at least, a first pass of naming
> > consolidation should be done).
>
> Question is *why* we need standardization? Assuming alarms only need to be
> interpreted by a human, I don't see a reason.

for the sake of humanity ;-)
to be serious, the reasons were (are) below

> > This would at least allow:
> > - to avoid alarm duplication,
>
> That would be inconvenient, but I'd rather see the same alarm mentioned
> twice than not at all.

the point was mainly to avoid confusion for users of multiple UPS vendors.

> > - to help developers implementing alarm support,
>
> I'd rather help the operator who has to fix the problem, by sticking as
> close as possible to the operational manual of the UPS. See also the reply
> from Kjell, I think that is the most convincing reason *not* to
> standardize.

reaching both goals would be the heaven

> > - to have something like the cmdvartab (friendly alarm names) that can
> > be used to display something less cryptic than the raw alarm name.
>
> The problem still remains that this will need to be a *huge* list (to
> support all different notifications). The bcmxcp driver alone uses over
> 200 different alarm messages. I'd rather keep this driver specific (free
> format).

in the light of this last point, the free format suits me fine.
I would prefer the term "opaque" or "manufacturer specific" to "free
format", though it's exactly the same thing. The only difference is
that we explicitly mention that we refer to the manufacturer's own
naming, not NUT's or any other one.

Arnaud
-- 
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