Consider renaming liftoff_output to liftoff_crtc
Closed this issue · 4 comments
A liftoff_output is really just a KMS CRTC. The name "output" was chosen because the term "CRTC" is only historical, KMS CRTCs have nothing to do with actual Cathode Ray Tube Controllers.
Is the name "output" confusing to users? Would it be better to use the term "CRTC" for consistency with the KMS API?
Weston uses output for CRTC and head for connector. I don't like the names at all but didn't think of anything better either.
Personally when working on libliftoff I didn't found the liftoff_output name to be confusing. Actually I think from the perspective of a newcomer "CRTC" is more difficult to understand.
In KWinFT the "Output" class is a composition of a CRTC and an active connector, represent a fully functional display pipeline, so to say. As @fooishbar notes the interpretation in Weston seems to be a bit different. It would be nice to come to a shared understanding of what "output" means, but regarding this ticket both maps fine to liftoff_output as iirc the connector is irrelevant to liftoff's API.
Thanks for the feedback! Glad to hear that using something else than CRTC isn't too confusing. :)
I guess some wording I've seen elsewhere is "pipe/sink" (i915?). Probably a little better than output/head, but oh well.
All right, closing this since it seems to be a non-issue.