+ * Declare packed structures containing a uint16_t and a uint32_t,
+ * cast the pointer to point to one of those, and fetch through it;
+ * the GCC manual doesn't appear to explicitly say that
+ * __attribute__((packed)) causes the compiler to generate unaligned-safe
+ * code, but it apppears to do so.
+ *
+ * We do this in case the compiler can generate code using those
+ * instructions to do an unaligned load and pass stuff to "ntohs()" or
+ * "ntohl()", which might be better than than the code to fetch the
+ * bytes one at a time and assemble them. (That might not be the
+ * case on a little-endian platform, such as DEC's MIPS machines and
+ * Alpha machines, where "ntohs()" and "ntohl()" might not be done
+ * inline.)
+ *
+ * We do this only for specific architectures because, for example,
+ * at least some versions of GCC, when compiling for 64-bit SPARC,
+ * generate code that assumes alignment if we do this.
+ *
+ * XXX - add other architectures and compilers as possible and
+ * appropriate.
+ *
+ * HP's C compiler, indicated by __HP_cc being defined, supports
+ * "#pragma unaligned N" in version A.05.50 and later, where "N"
+ * specifies a number of bytes at which the typedef on the next
+ * line is aligned, e.g.
+ *
+ * #pragma unalign 1
+ * typedef uint16_t unaligned_uint16_t;
+ *
+ * to define unaligned_uint16_t as a 16-bit unaligned data type.
+ * This could be presumably used, in sufficiently recent versions of
+ * the compiler, with macros similar to those below. This would be
+ * useful only if that compiler could generate better code for PA-RISC
+ * or Itanium than would be generated by a bunch of shifts-and-ORs.
+ *
+ * DEC C, indicated by __DECC being defined, has, at least on Alpha,
+ * an __unaligned qualifier that can be applied to pointers to get the
+ * compiler to generate code that does unaligned loads and stores when
+ * dereferencing the pointer in question.
+ *
+ * XXX - what if the native C compiler doesn't support
+ * __attribute__((packed))? How can we get it to generate unaligned
+ * accesses for *specific* items?