[help-gengetopt] Re: Wish: An option to show more descriptions

[T]

On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 10:36:11 +0200, Lorenzo Bettini wrote:

>> So I wish that gengetopt can have another option to show help for parameters
>> in details (say, --usage).
> 
> that would be great!

Oh, THANK YOU!

> probably --usage wouldn't be the best name?

No, that's only the result of 1 sec thinking. :-)

> how does Pod::Usage call such an option?

hm..., actually, it doesn't have an name for it. so feel free to coin your
own. :-)

> This would require to add also another field in the option in the .ggo 
> file (for instance details="<very long help description>")

I knew, that's why I put wish. I never thought it might be on the todo
list. :-)

>> What the format would be? I think Pod::Usage's format for parameter
>> details in the standard format. It's ok if you don't have Pod::Usage or
>> know how to use it. "keychain -h" produces the same format as well.
>> Don't have keychain? I really recommend installing it if you need to
>> ssh to somewhere else.
>> 
>> BTW, "keychain -h"'s color output is so cool. I wish we could have that
>> too. :-)
> 
> COOOOOL!!! :-)
> I'm used to this format since I use Gentoo as well, and I love this
> output! Is it standard somehow?

color or the format? 

Actually I don't know. But the format seems so standard to me. it is
almost the same as what we see in man pages. 

Having this feature, it won't be far away from automatically generating a
man page. But I don't recommend going that far to do the man generation
from scratch. Let me recommend asciidoc. It can help generating man page,
html files, DocBook (articles, books and refentry documents) and LinuxDoc.

For a quick AsciiDoc Markup Syntax summary, check out

http://xpt.sourceforge.net/techdocs/nix/asciidoc-syn/

> Because I'd really love to add it!

THANK YOU!

A side note, I've done an extensive search about code generation for
option parameter handling automation. To be honest, gengetopt was not my
top pick, because I thought, hmm, since I have to learn one, why not
something that can do more just one language. Luckily, the one that I
picked was not friendly to newcomers, at least to me. I said luckily
because I really meant it. I'm so happy to have chosen gengetopt. 

Thanks a lot Lorenzo, you make me, a newcomer, feel so at home.

-- 
Tong (remove underscore(s) to reply)
  http://xpt.sourceforge.net/