What to do with stub articles?

[nullplan]

Hi all,

the other day, I stumbled upon the article about the "far call trick" and it got me thinking about what to do with articles like it. It doesn't really serve a purpose on its own, but I don't want to outright delete it, either.

The trick itself merely documents the behavior of the far return instruction. Is it necessary to do that? Documentation exists in abundance. Also, though the page is named for a call, the code on the page only shows a jump. And as an aside, why not just use an indirect jump? Why does it always seem like I'm the only one who knows about those?

Incidentally, I use a trick like it for my routine that loads CS.

But what to do? Should all the stub tricks be rounded up and herded together into one page? Is that even enough content for a wiki page?

[nexos]

Maybe you take all the stub tricks and put them in one page like you mentioned. And then label that page a stub .

[nullplan]

See, the problem with that is that that page would be somewhat lacking an encyclopedic tone. What would you title it? "List of weird programming tricks"?

[nexos]

Maybe "List of OS development (or maybe programming) tricks"?

But is the wiki really in any kind of encyclopedic tone as it is ? I wish it was.

[nexos]

Upon examination of the aforementioned page, I wouldn't even call that a trick per se. If you know about RETF, do you really need a whole wiki page to understand this?

[nullplan]

Upon examination of the aforementioned page, I wouldn't even call that a trick per se. If you know about RETF, do you really need a whole wiki page to understand this?

My point exactly. I have now nuked the page. It held no information of value, and the trick could be achieved far easier with an indirect far jump or call.

[vvaltchev]

Guys, could you post a link to the wiki page you're talking about?

[nullplan]

Guys, could you post a link to the wiki page you're talking about?

Sorry, I cannot, since I deleted the page. Originally, I could not because I was on mobile, and creating a post was hard enough without trying to use multiple tabs. The page was called "Far Call trick", and it contained nothing but a short explanation and a code snippet along these lines:

Code: Select all

push new_cs
push new_ip
retf

The talk page still exists and raises some of the same questions: https://wiki.osdev.org/Talk:Far_Call_Trick

I question the purpose of adding such information to the Wiki, and the form of it. As it was, it was too little content, but the only content I can think of pairing it with would be other little tricks that seem to help, but then, what other tricks are there along those lines? In the end, it was just an application of the far return instruction, and there are endless tricks along the lines of using instructions inside of their specification but outside of their normal use case. Do we document them all? Only those pertaining to OS development? Where's the cut-off for that?

[nexos]

I hate to be harsh, but the article appears to be a beginning OS developer having an "aha" moment with the RETF instruction, and he wants to tell the whole world about it. The wiki isn't the place for that, the forum is.

[kzinti]

I hate to be harsh, but the article appears to be a beginning OS developer having an "aha" moment with the RETF instruction, and he wants to tell the whole world about it. The wiki isn't the place for that, the forum is.

I concur with this assessment. There are too many things like that in the wiki: beginners discovering basic things and writing whole pages about it.

[vvaltchev]

Guys, could you post a link to the wiki page you're talking about?

Sorry, I cannot, since I deleted the page. Originally, I could not because I was on mobile, and creating a post was hard enough without trying to use multiple tabs. The page was called "Far Call trick", and it contained nothing but a short explanation and a code snippet along these lines:

Code: Select all

push new_cs
push new_ip
retf

The talk page still exists and raises some of the same questions: https://wiki.osdev.org/Talk:Far_Call_Trick

I question the purpose of adding such information to the Wiki, and the form of it. As it was, it was too little content, but the only content I can think of pairing it with would be other little tricks that seem to help, but then, what other tricks are there along those lines? In the end, it was just an application of the far return instruction, and there are endless tricks along the lines of using instructions inside of their specification but outside of their normal use case. Do we document them all? Only those pertaining to OS development? Where's the cut-off for that?

Makes sense, thank you