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Date:   Sat, 21 Jul 2018 22:41:18 -0700
From:   Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To:     William Breathitt Gray <vilhelm.gray@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [PATCH v7 01/10] counter: Introduce the Generic Counter
 interface
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On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 12:26:10 -0400 William Breathitt Gray <vilhelm.gray@gmail.com> wrote:

> >Also, many many drivers deal with signals-as-an-electrical-thing - is
> >it appropriate for this particular driver to take that namespace?
> 
> In the context of the Generic Counter paradigm, a "Signal" is an
> abstraction for the stream of data that is fed to the counter device for
> evaluation (triggering updates for the readable "Count"). In many cases
> a "Signal" correlates with a physical electrical line (for example the A
> and B electrical lines for a quadrature encoder), but this isn't a hard
> requirement as the paradigm permits more abstract data streams.
> 
> I decided on "Signal" to match the naming convention that appears in the
> datasheets of many counter devices, but "Line" may be a decent
> alternative name we could use to indicate a counter device input data
> stream.
> 
> I'd like to get some other opinions as well before I make a naming
> change to "Signal" -- whether to stay with "Signal," switch to "Line," or
> rename to something else. For what it's worth, I think it's unlikely for
> a counter device driver author to confuse a Counter Signal with the
> Linux OS signal within the context of the Generic Counter paradigm and
> their respective counter device datasheet.

gc_signal_* would be better.  That retains "signal", but makes
it clear that the symbols belong to generic counter.