Bug#361105: RFE: GOption output should tabulate long help messages, not break the line mid-word.

[Neil Williams]

On Thursday 06 April 2006 9:58 pm, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> Le jeudi 06 avril 2006 à 17:27 +0100, Neil Williams a écrit :
> > Package: libglib2.0-0
> > Version: 2.10.1-2
> > Severity: wishlist
> >
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> >
> > GOption help output gets very ugly and almost unusable with long help
> > messages.
> >
> > GOption output:

So this is the GOption output:

> >
> > - --invoice-vendor            Shorthand to relate an event or expense to
> > a contact, by vendor. Requires -t.
> > - --invoice-city              Shorthand to relate an event or expense to
> > a contact, by city. Requires -t.
> >
> > Compare with the equivalent popt output:

And this, as stated originally, is the equivalent popt output.

> > - --invoice-vendor            Shorthand to relate an event or expense to
> > a contact, by vendor. Requires -t.
> > - --invoice-city              Shorthand to relate an event or expense to
> > a contact, by city. Requires -t.

Only the entire thing has been mangled by email handling of whitespace so here 
I've forced the issue with dots.
--invoice-vendor            Shorthand to relate an event or expense to a
............................contact, by vendor. Requires -t.
--invoice-city              Shorthand to relate an event or expense to a
............................contact, by city. Requires -t.

> >
> > GOption also breaks help messages mid-word which just makes things ugly:
> >
> > - --debug                   Print debugging information to a temporary fi
> > le. 

More email mangling. I've forced the line break again but everytime we go 
through this cycle the whitespace will get mangled.

All I need is a line break BETWEEN words and padding so that the continuation 
appears under the explanation NOT beneath the option.

> >
> > I was hoping to replace popt with GOption but I'll have to live with the
> > popt dependency until GOption produces content that is at least as
> > pleasant for users as popt.
>
> hi,
>
> Could you copy what popt does for the same application or maybe a some
> code example to compare both?

?? That's what I have done above. The first part is GOption output, the second 
popt output, as explained above. Reproduced, again, below. Same application, 
same options.

It's perfectly clear in the HTML bug report:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=361105

--invoice-vendor            Shorthand to relate an event or expense to
a contact, by vendor. Requires -t.
--invoice-city              Shorthand to relate an event or expense to
a contact, by city. Requires -t.

Compare with the equivalent popt output:
--invoice-vendor            Shorthand to relate an event or expense to a
                            contact, by vendor. Requires -t.
--invoice-city              Shorthand to relate an event or expense to a
                            contact, by city. Requires -t.

GOption also breaks help messages mid-word which just makes things ugly:

--debug                     Print debugging information to a temporary fi
le.

The code example is simple - take the example already in the glib-2.0 
documentation and extend the text content so that it's longer than one line. 
Simple.

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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