A short proposal for discussion: RS-232
Gary W. Swearingen
garys at freebsd.org
Thu Sep 8 21:58:47 UTC 2005
The Handbook uses these terms (for the same purpose, AFAICT):
RS232, RS-232, RS232C, RS-232C, RS232D, EIATIA-232-E, and CCITT V.24
I propose that when editing doc and www files, we change these "232"
terms to simply "RS-232", with very few exceptions where a particular
version seems to be needed.
And I propose the removal of this glossary item:
Recommended Standard 232C (RS232C)
A standard for communications between serial devices.
which is rather odd and only used in the definition of RS232C.
I have a contributed patch in hand which starts implementing the
switch to hyphens in RS232 in the serialcomms chapter. I intend to
remove the -C's and commit it in a few days (after mentor auth.)
unless something discourages me.
Reasoning:
The most recent related standard is called by it's developer
TIA-232-F, but since TIA is an association under the umbrella of the
EIA, it probably should be called "EIA/TIA-232-F" which is how this
helpful web page has the full form:
http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_RS232.html
I like the way that page has most references: EIA-232; it's sort of
a lowest-common-denominator when you don't need to be more specific.
But RS-232 will surely be more widely recognized for a long time.
BTW, I have a book with excerpts of official EIA RS-232-C documents
in which they used hyphens, as in RS-232-C and RS-422. I've been
told that Google reports:
RS232 3,950,000 results
RS-232 7,240,000 results
Interested readers can easily-enough find info on the many related
(old, newer, newest, 25-pin, 9-pin, USA, ISO) standards outside
FreeBSD documents.
More information about the freebsd-doc
mailing list