On 06/21/2017 10:04 PM, Ruediger Meier wrote:
> 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.
It's a big job, so if it helps you then it's fine with me.
It would be nice to have help and version use consistent language one day.
>
> 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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