Re: [PATCH] git-commit.txt: Order options alphabetically

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You may want to invest in a spell-checker.

On Dec 1, 2010, at 2:35 PM, Jari Aalto wrote:

>> the documentation is often more useful if the options are
>> grouped together by features and concepts they relate to.
> 
> Where do you see grouping all the sudden? Manaula pages are not
> primarily used to learn things, they are used as reference. Just like
> Book indexes.

Most certainly they are used to learn things. Especially with tools like git.
Don't know what options you can give to git-diff? Read the manpage!

> I haven't seed anyone for 10's of years who would have read full manaul
> page from top to botton; every single line at one stop.
> 
> They come and go, come and go to read it. Learn bit by bit. And there is
> the strenght od proper indexing, the alphabetical.

Indexing, sure, but the actual manpage is not an index. A-Z ordering makes
no sense for the manpage. When people read, chunk by chunk, they expect
related functionality. It especially helps with discoverability. For example,
I know of the -w flag to git-diff that tells it to ignore whitespace. I'm not
certain this does exactly what I want, so I pop open the manpage, search for
-w, and read it. And I'm right, it doesn't do what I want. But right next to
it is the flag -b, and that _does_ do precisely what I want. If the manpage
was ordered alphabetically, I'd likely have never found the -b flag. As it is,
all 3 whitespace-related flags to git-diff are grouped together, and it helps
not only with reading the manpage for the first time (as I learn all related
concepts at the same time), but with discovering the related flags when I go
back to read documentation on the flags I already know.

-Kevin Ballard--
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