RE: [Gnu-arch-users] clean up tla help

[Derek Zhou]

Alfred,
I was talking about tla help, not --help. I am not sure we are talking
about the same thing. 
Derek 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden 
> [mailto:address@hidden On 
> Behalf Of Alfred M. Szmidt
> Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 3:46 PM
> To: Anders Rune Jensen
> Cc: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Gnu-arch-users] clean up tla help
> 
>    To me help should be optimized for the common case. The common case
>    would be that the user is only interested in a small segment of the
>    available commands. So I would do it the other way around: Let help
>    show the most common ones and add something like --help-full which
>    displays all commands.
> 
> I still (strongly at that) disagree, a "normal" user might still want
> to use some infrequently use command, infact, that is why you use
> --help to begin with, you don't remeber a _infrequently_ used command,
> or the syntax for it.  If it was common, then you wouldn't be issuing
> --help! :-) You wouldn't want tar' --help to only list --create,
> --versbose, --extract and --file now would you?  The default behaviour
> for --help should always be to list all non-deprected commands, in my
> not so humble opinion.
> 
> And for new users, they really should read a manual that shows the
> most common commands, which then builds up to the less common ones.
> As a quickreference for those, --quick-reference, --help=common,
> --help=ref or something could be used.  But as a default... Icky.  You
> use --help to get info on those things you don't remeber.
> 
> In other words, the common case for using --help is to get a listing
> on infrequently used commands, and not frequently used ones.
> 
> 
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