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Personally, the frame of references I use are: 1) the directionality of
the data being transferred; 2) the initiator of the transfer; 3) the
device that the user is directly interacting with.
If the user is using device X to initiate the transfer of data from X to
Y, then they are uploading from X to Y.
If the user is using device X to initiate the transfer of data from Y to
X, then they are downloading from Y to X.
If there is a GUI that already exists and uses terms that are
counter-intuitive, that's unfortunate, and the corresponding
documentation should use the same terminology regardless of right
reasoning around the words that should actually be used, though.
In your particular example, the user uses a PC to initiate a transfer
from the PLC to the PC for editing, so they are downloading from PLC to
PC. And, if they use the PC to initiate a transfer from the PC back to
the PLC after editing, they are uploading to the PLC ...
But, (and here's where technical implementation details become actually
useful and relevant), if the "initiation" is actually triggered from the
PLC side (i.e., it raises a signal to the connected device to signal
"I'm ready to accept data" which is meant to trigger/initiate the
transfer from the PLC side), then instead of uploading from the PC to
the PLC, the PLC is downloading data from the PC. This may seem
unintuitive from a purely English language perspective, but the
difference in using "downloading" vs. "uploading" signals to the
audience a very specific detail about the implementation of how the
firmware moves between devices.
Just my two cents, obviously ...
On 1/27/15 10:01 AM, Chris Morton wrote:
> John living in his own siloed/silo'd world, everythingâincluding his GUIâis
> PLC-centric. Therefore, one uploads binaries *from* the PLC to the PC for
> editing/viewing, then can *download* them back to the PLC.
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