RE: Replacing "master" and "slave" terminology

["Sean Brierley" <sbrierley -at- Accu-Time -dot- com>]

Primary and secondary?

Steve and Pete? I mean, name one "controller" and the other
"administrator" or something. You can name them what you want, then
define what the name means.

Cheers,

Sean




-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+sbrierley=accu-time -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+sbrierley=accu-time -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Karen Mulholland
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 3:01 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Replacing "master" and "slave" terminology


When two similar things - circuits, devices,
mechanisms - are set up so that one controls the
other, it's often called a "master-slave"
relationship. For example, cars' brake systems have
master cylinders and slave cylinders. 

I've been on the geeky end of technical communication
for a long time, so I'm accustomed to this
terminology.
That doesn't necessarily mean I should use it, though;
frankly, it makes me a little queasy. 

Today as I walked an engineer through an edit session
on an application note that he's been writing, he
volunteered that although he had referred to elements
of his equipment setup as the "master" and "slave"
units, he was uncomfortable with those words. He asked
me what would be a better way to express the
relationship.
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