Re: [PATCH] iio: add ad5761 DAC driver

[Jonathan Cameron <jic23@kernel.org>]

On 20/12/15 11:19, Ricardo Ribalda Delgado wrote:
> Hello Jonthan
> 
> Thanks for your comments, I have fixed all the style problems in v2,
> so we can focus in the range parameter.
> 
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 5:31 PM, Jonathan Cameron <jic23@kernel.org> wrote:
>> Range isn't actually specified in the ABI docs.
>> Documenation\ABI\testing\sysfs-bus-iio*
>> The control interface for this is normally scale rather than range
>> (we had to pick one of the two and that is the way it fell out)  Usually
>> hardware designers care about range, but userspace programs are often
>> most directly interested in scale factors that need to be applied.
>> (and that was my most rediculously over generalized statement for the day ;)
> 
> What about a first version of the driver where the range is set via
> pdata and is not userland configurable?
> That way the four chips will be supported and we can have more
> feedback from other users about the range issue.
That would be fine.  Generally I'd imagine a given board will only want to
have one sensible choice anyway! (other than devkits at least)
> 
>>
>> I can see this is rather complex here given the random looking collection
>> of associated scales and offsets.  You would have to have _available
>> attributes to say what offsets are available at a given scale I think.
>> Also we'd have to then define a precedence order in the docs for the
>> two attributes (worth doing to make it obvious what to do when this
>> sort of setup arises).
> 
> The problem with that approach is that there will be two operations to
> set the range: one  to change the scale, and another for the offset.  The output
> voltage will change twice in this process and may have an intermediate value
> that can damage a circuit.
Fair point - I had not thought of that.  Hmm.. Could add a commit type attribute
but that's ugly too.

Even if we do allow changing the range ultimately, I think
it would need some hard restrictions in platform data on what is 'safe' for a
particular board.
> 
> I also believe that my approach with a text description is more user friendly
> (but problably because I programmed it :P)
> 
> In any case, I will implement whatever we agree ;)
For now, pdata sounds like the best plan and revisit this at a later date.

Jonathan
> 
> Best regards!
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