Specify guidelines on implementation-specific constants like IALIGN

[omasanori]

(Originally raised at riscv/riscv-isa-manual#2827)

Currently, there are no style guideline for IALIGN, XLEN etc. Moreover, there seems no official name for this kind of things. In the ISA manual, sometimes they are called the terms but it is too broad.

Examples from the ISA manual:

• ILEN
• min(ILEN,XLEN)
• UXLEN=64

How should we style them?

[wmat]

I'd suggest they should be all caps given that they are acronym-like.

ILEN==Integer Maximum Length
XLEN==Integer Register Width
MXLEN/UXLEN==the same as above but specific to Machine mode or User mode.

Have you found instances where these are not capitalized?

[omasanori]

I meant that font style is unspecified and inconsistent, sorry for confusion. I am not aware of instances like IAlign, xlen or such.

[kersten1]

Its been discussed in the doc-sig but no resolution yet. I'll put it on the agenda again. I agree with you on the inconsistencies. We are working towards it but it is slow going. Keep picking at things!