[PATCH] Remove obscure "low-latency" parts in the introduction of spec

Justin Lee justinlee5455 at gmail.com
Wed May 29 13:24:12 PDT 2013


According to Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latency_%28engineering%29#Packet-switched_networks
latency means "the time from the source sending a packet to the destination
receiving it". Therefore, latency is unrelated to whether the operation is
asynchronous or synchronous. And also unrelated to whether it's one-way or
round-trip. Latency exists for asynchronous and one-way transfer, because for
current DBus implementations we need at least one context switch to transfer
each message from the sender process to the receiver process. Emphasizing
D-Bus is low-latency could encourage user to abuse/misuse the system.

Mail disscusion:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dbus/2013-May/015665.html

Bug:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=65141
---
 doc/dbus-specification.xml |   13 ++++---------
 1 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/dbus-specification.xml b/doc/dbus-specification.xml
index a6bedfa..507ad50 100644
--- a/doc/dbus-specification.xml
+++ b/doc/dbus-specification.xml
@@ -175,23 +175,18 @@
   <sect1 id="introduction">
     <title>Introduction</title>
     <para>
-      D-Bus is a system for low-latency, low-overhead, easy to use
+      D-Bus is a system for low-overhead, easy to use
       interprocess communication (IPC). In more detail:
       <itemizedlist>
         <listitem>
           <para>
-            D-Bus is <emphasis>low-latency</emphasis> because it is designed 
-            to avoid round trips and allow asynchronous operation, much like 
-            the X protocol.
-          </para>
-        </listitem>
-        <listitem>
-          <para>
             D-Bus is <emphasis>low-overhead</emphasis> because it uses a
             binary protocol, and does not have to convert to and from a text
             format such as XML. Because D-Bus is intended for potentially
             high-resolution same-machine IPC, not primarily for Internet IPC,
-            this is an interesting optimization.
+            this is an interesting optimization. D-Bus is also designed to
+            avoid round trips and allow asynchronous operation, much like
+            the X protocol.
           </para>
         </listitem>
         <listitem>
-- 
1.7.5.4



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