bug#44248: Indentation of --help and --version

[Pádraig Brady]

On 29/10/2020 21:25, Roland Illig wrote:
> On 28.10.2020 21:55, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
> > We have so many utils that it may be worth writing some utility functions
> > to automatically do the alignment.  Usually, that part of the usage output
> > has 3 columns:
> > a) the short option (if any),
> > b) the long option (if any),
> > c) the description (maybe multiline).
>
> I completely agree. This would be nice to have, both for users and for
> translators.
>
> > E.g. for ls.c:usage:
> >      usage_param("-a", "--all", _("do not ignore entries starting with ."));
> >      ...
> >      usage_param(NULL, "--dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir",
> >                        _("follow each command line symbolic link\n"
> >                          "that points to a directory"));
> >     usage_param_help();
> >     usage_param_version();
> > and a final:
> >     usage_param_finish();
>
> This code adds a bit of redundancy.  The relation between -a and --all
> is already expressed when setting up the getopt_long.  It is repeated here.
>
> Ideally there would be a single definition from which both the
> getopt_long options and the --help string are derived.  Some prior art
> can be found at https://golang.org/pkg/flag/.

Maybe, though I don't want to over engineer anything here.
We're not going to be adding new options that often.

> I don't like the hard line break in the option description.  The line
> breaks should be computed based on the terminal size or a fixed line
> width.  It's not possible to predict the screen column in which in the
> option description will start, since that depends on the names of the
> other options.  Therefore, the option descriptions should be wrapped as
> necessary.  See fold(1).

Yes agreed.

Spacing or alignment should not need consideration for translators.
That includes line feeds.

We probably should provide some context to translators also like:
/* TRANSLATORS: --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir option  */

cheers,
Pádraig