Talk:Descriptor

In reference to the [Paging] references made on the page: AFAIK (Intel Documentation) there is no relation to Paging in desctiptors.

The P (Present) bit for selectors when 0 can generate a #NP (Segment Not Present), whereas the P (Present) bit in PDE/PTE (page directory/table entries), when 0, can generate a #PF (Page Fault). Forge 17:06, 5 July 2013 (CDT)

Thanks. Fixed. John 05:58, 6 July 2013 (CDT)

Renaming or splitting article

The term descriptor is kinda ill suited as the name of this article. The term is easily confused with file descriptors and surely a better x86-specific name can be given to this article. --Sortie 18:05, 5 July 2013 (CDT)

I vote for merging into the appropriate articles (GDT and IDT) and then remove this. A quick browse of the GDT article reveals that it only deals with code/data descriptors (not TSS etc) which we could expand with information from this article. Unfortunately, most of the information on the GDT article is in vector graphics format, so we presumably need the original author to step forward with the pictures to edit? John 05:54, 6 July 2013 (CDT)

I vote for removal of the GDT and the IDT articles as well. In place, we should have a Segmentation and Interrupts page, with a x86 section which deals with GDT/IDT. Since GDT and IDT are often the first thing one does when writing a hobby kernel for x86, it has been given a lot of special attention. I don't see us having articles about "Page Directory" or "Page Table" -- it all comes under virtual memory/paging. --Shikhin 04:56, 8 July 2013 (CDT)

Note that it would be good to keep the x86-specific names for this information (GDT, IDT) because they contain x86-specific information, unlike "Segmentation" and "Interrupts" that by nature should have generic information about multiple architectures. Likewise, "Page Table" and "Page Directory" would be bad names for articles, because then we would have articles on "Page Directory Table" and "Page Map Level 4" as well, when it really should be part of "Paging (x86)". --Sortie 05:49, 8 July 2013 (CDT)

Hmm, maybe. I'm just suggesting that as a community, we place a bit too much emphasis on x86. OSDev on ARM actually has quite some benefits, and I find it equally fun and interesting. I was thinking that maybe we have all ARCH-specific topics under one page, rather than spread them out. Then, again, that's not been done yet, so maybe there is some valid reason? How about a quick vote here? (oh, and as per your analogy, we can just as well have GDT under Segmentation (x86) -- mostly because I suppose it's only on x86 -- to have a neat hierarchy) :-) --Shikhin 09:53, 8 July 2013 (CDT)

No need to vote, just make the restructuring changes yourself if you have the time and you think it is an improvement. If anyone strongly disagrees, they can make a forum topic or another talk page discussion. --Sortie 12:40, 8 July 2013 (CDT)