On Sun, 18 Jul 2004, Allen Briggs wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 02:21:57AM +0000, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
>> Fill in blank "vendor" and "product_id" fields with "UNKNOWN", to make it
>> possible to match a valid entry in ~/.cdrdao-drivers.
>
> Catching up on the tech-kern messages just now, I've been wondering
> if "EMPTY" or "UNSPEC" or "MISSING" might be better than "UNKNOWN".
> Probably just my personal taste...  :-)

I briefly considered "Unspecified", except that doesn't fit in the 
eight letters allowed. "BLANK" might be good, since the field is 
actually 8 space characters, except I can just about imagine a company 
named "BLANK", and no user should care that the field is space-filled, 
but only that there's no useful information in it.

I think there will never be a company named "UNKNOWN", but mainly, 
"UNKNOWN" sums up the idea very well, that the name of the vendor is 
simply not known. Anyone who sees that will instantly realize it's a 
placeholder, and not confuse it with an actual manufacturer name, or 
if they do -- never say never -- they'll feel stupid when they finally 
figure it out.

Looking at the vendor list on ftp.t10.org, the field does not have to 
be all caps, so maybe "Unknown" would be better? Opinions? I'll 
happily go along with any consensus that develops, then try to sell it 
to the cdrdao folks.


Frederick