On 06/27/2017 02:42 PM, J William Piggott wrote:
On 06/26/2017 02:29 PM, Ruediger Meier wrote:
From: Ruediger Meier <ruediger.meier@xxxxxxxxxxx>
We change
-h, --help display this help and exit
-V, --version output version information and exit
to
-h, --help display this help
-V, --version print version
Some thoughts about this:
* use "display" for --help because it matches better if we
would add pager support (like git --help)
* "print" for --version to be different
To be different why?
Because AFAIR somewhere Karel or somebody else mentioned that we
could add auto-pager support on terminal for long --help output
(like findmnt) or otherwise colored help texts. This would be a
difference, doing more than printf only.
--version just print and exit
--help display something and keep the display (pager) open.
It makes it sound like help and version will not
have the same action. Laymen think 'print' means send to the printer.
Translators will have to figure out which different words to use.
Hehe, I have never thought about printers. But for my bad English
"display" sounds more like TV show or graphical X-display. ;)
Seriously IMO "print" is the right term for command-line and shell
environment . It's also more often used than "display" in POSIX and
coreutils manpages.
What is broken by:
-h, --help display this help
-V, --version display version
I really think it is a good idea to use consistent language for
Consistent language is not always human-friendly and can also be
more hard or boring to read. See
$ man bash | tr ' ' '\n'| grep display | wc -l
67
$ man bash | tr ' ' '\n'| grep print | wc -l
70
Try to imagine this manpage if they would always use the same word.
comparable actions. It is easier to comprehend, especially for
non-native speakers. Once they understand the meaning of a term,
possibly from a context that they the understand well, then that
knowledge is transferable to other contexts. Why add confusion by
constantly interchanging term synonyms?
Anyways, I'm also fine with display. This was just my favorite
proposal.
cu,
Rudi
* "this" for --help is important to make clear that running
--help would not give you any better information than the
one you see already
* remove "information and exit" because it's bloat for the
short-help, everybody knows what it does if it exists
In the manpages we should use the old, longer but more correct
descriptions, inclusive a reminder if --help/--version are only
working when used as the only option. Note the term "version
information" indicates that we don't only print a single version
number.
CC: J William Piggott <elseifthen@xxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Ruediger Meier <ruediger.meier@xxxxxxxxxxx>
---
include/c.h | 4 ++--
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/include/c.h b/include/c.h
index ce5551535..be7e6fd53 100644
--- a/include/c.h
+++ b/include/c.h
@@ -316,8 +316,8 @@ static inline int xusleep(useconds_t usec)
#define USAGE_COLUMNS _("\nAvailable output columns:\n")
#define USAGE_SEPARATOR "\n"
-#define USAGE_HELP_TXT _("display this help and exit")
-#define USAGE_VERSION_TXT _("output version information and exit")
+#define USAGE_HELP_TXT _("display this help")
+#define USAGE_VERSION_TXT _("print version")
#define PRINT_USAGE_HELP(marg_dsc) \
printf( \
--
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