Re: [PATCH] chroot,comm,join: fix usage options style

[Pádraig Brady]

On 08/12/2020 17:12, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
> On 12/8/20 12:49 AM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> > As it happens we're currently working on a more general solution
> > to alignment of --help output, which should address this.
>
> Yes, the idea is to output the usage texts in 3 columns: short option,
> long option and description.  The question is if such automatic alignment
> would lead to a nicely readable text.  The problem starts with:
> - short options having arguments,
> - several short options for the same thing: rm -r,-R
> - several long options for the same thing: --quiet, --silent
> etc.
>
> Thus said, after fixing the above it would be hard to get better results
> with automatic, columnar alignment without loosing too much space.
>
> In that regard, the programs chroot, comm and join are just violating
> the status quo: they do not align long-only options properly.
> Therefore, I'm 60:40 to start with Arman's patches, yet fixing
> the indentation of the description column in join and comm: see
> attached (squashed) patch.
>
> The only thing which is still a bit annoying is that the indentation
> of the long option and the description via the HELP_OPTION_DESCRIPTION
> and VERSION_OPTION_DESCRIPTION macros do not match that of the program.
> We could address this by passing the number of necessary spaces as
> parameters to the macros (and maybe change them into functions).
>
> WDYT?

wrt the auto alignment,
I was considering using similar output to that of man pages.
I.E. single char options have descriptions on the same line,
while long options have the description starting on the next line.
Outputting to terminal, we might also highlight the `--option` line
to aid visual delineation.

Feel free to push Arman's patch, as it does improve things immediately.

thanks,
Pádraig