Re: Configure.help editorial policy

[Eric S. Raymond]

David Garfield <[e-mail]>:
> Eric S. Raymond writes:
>  > What, and *encourage* non-uniform terminology?  No, I won't do that.
>  > Better to have a single standard set of abbreviations, no matter how
>  > ugly, than this.
> 
> Valid argument.  I will point out that the current version is
> non-uniform.  Quoting from Configure.help :
> 
> 
> > # Choice: himem
> > High Memory support
> > CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM
> >   Linux can use up to 64 Gigabytes of physical memory on x86 systems.
> >   However, the address space of 32-bit x86 processors is only 4
> >   Gigabytes large. That means that, if you have a large amount of
> >   physical memory, not all of it can be "permanently mapped" by the
> >   kernel. The physical memory that's not permanently mapped is called
> >   "high memory".
> > 
> >   If you are compiling a kernel which will never run on a machine with
> >   more than 960 megabytes of total physical RAM, answer "off" here
> >   (default choice and suitable for most users). This will result in a
> >   "3GiB/1GiB" split: 3GiB are mapped so that each process sees a 3GiB
> >   virtual memory space and the remaining part of the 4GiB virtual memory
> >   space is used by the kernel to permanently map as much physical memory
> >   as possible.
> > 
> >   If the machine has between 1 and 4 Gigabytes physical RAM, then
> >   answer "4GB" here.
> 
> 
> Note "3GiB/1GiB" and "4GB".

Yeah, that's because I can't touch the symbol namespace.  Not yet, anyway.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression: for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that
will reach unto himself.	-- Thomas Paine