On Wednesday 21 June 2017, J William Piggott wrote:
> On 06/21/2017 10:55 AM, Karel Zak wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 03:05:04PM +0200, Ruediger Meier wrote:
> >> On Tuesday 20 June 2017, Karel Zak wrote:
> >>> On Sun, Jun 18, 2017 at 08:45:09PM -0400, J William Piggott wrote:
> >>>> Signed-off-by: J William Piggott <elseifthen@xxxxxxx>
> >>>> ---
> >>>> include/c.h | 4 ++--
> >>>> sys-utils/hwclock.c | 48
> >>>> +++++++++++++++++++++--------------------------- 2 files
> >>>> changed, 23 insertions(+), 29 deletions(-)
> >>>>
> >>>> diff --git a/include/c.h b/include/c.h
> >>>> index 9c19965..bd073fc 100644
> >>>> --- a/include/c.h
> >>>> +++ b/include/c.h
> >>>> @@ -319,8 +319,8 @@ static inline int xusleep(useconds_t usec)
> >>>> #define USAGE_OPTIONS _("\nOptions:\n")
> >>>> #define USAGE_FUNCTIONS _("\nFunctions:\n")
> >>>> #define USAGE_SEPARATOR "\n"
> >>>> -#define USAGE_HELP _(" -h, --help display this help
> >>>> and exit\n") -#define USAGE_VERSION _(" -V, --version output
> >>>> version information and exit\n") +#define USAGE_HELP _("
> >>>> -h, --help display this information and exit\n")
> >>>
> >>> "display this help and exit\n"
> >>> or
> >>> "display help information and exit\n"
> >>>
> >>> sounds better than "this information".
> >>
> >> IMO "this" is important because it makes clear that running --help
> >> would not give you any better information than the one you see
> >> already.
> >>
> >> Compare this:
> >> $ xz --help | grep help
> >> -h, --help display this short help and exit
> >> -H, --long-help display the long help (lists also the ...
> >>
> >> $ xz --long-help | grep help
> >> -h, --help display the short help (lists only the basic
> >> ... -H, --long-help display this long help and exit
> >>
> >>
> >> Our old errtryhelp, USAGE_HELP and USAGE_VERSION were 100% the
> >> same like coreutils. This was a nice consensus and even a bit
> >> shorter.
> >>
> >> Anyways, instead of improving the grammer and correctness I would
> >> rather make these trivial option descriptions as short as
> >> possible, like
>
> My intent was to have these two very similar messages using the same
> language. I think it would be easier to understand for non-native
> speakers and easier for translators to work with if they did. I'm all
> for making them more concise, but how about this:
>
> -h, --help display this help
> -V, --version display version
> or
> -h, --help show this help
> -V, --version show version
>
> I like display better.
The more I think about it the more I am against any change at all. We
have some commands with different short- or longopts for help/version.
These commands hardcoded our old strings and now it looks inconsistent
again.
So for now I would revert this "include/c.h" part of your patch.
If we still want to change it we should wait until my other usage/stderr
cleanup settled down. For example I've added now --help and --version
longopts for *all* our commands. So another idea would be to only show
the longopts in the short help. Then all tools could use the macros.
Like
--help display this help
--version display version
... and corresponding short opts will be documented for correctness in
the man pages only. IMO this would be ok for these trivial options. And
personally I don't want to be teached about 'fsck -?' or 'chsh -u'.
Lets hide these random short opts.
> >> -h, --help display this help
> >> -V, --version show version
> >>
> >> Everybody knows what these options do when they exist.
> >
> > Good points, please, send a patch. It would be also nice to add any
> > comment to the c.h to avoid future updates on this area.
> >
> > Karel
>
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