Re: [screen-devel] description of -S and -p semantics in man page seems wrong

[Chris Jones]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 05:47:52PM EDT, Britton Kerin wrote:

[..]

> You seem to be correct.  The -S man page documentation still needs
> a fix though.  It begins "When creating a new session,... " which is
> very misleading.  I notice that the Screen User's Manual has this:

> ‘-S sessionname’
>     Set the name of the new session to sessionname. This option can be used
>     to specify a meaningful name for the session in place of the default
>     tty.host suffix. This name identifies the session for the screen -list
>     and screen -r commands. This option is equivalent to the sessionname
>     command (see Session Name).

> Which is different text but wrong in the same way.  The -S option has
> semantic significance that has nothing to do with the creation of new
> sessions. It applies in that case but also in others.
> 
> I just spent some time trying to figure out how to get a list of all
> the windows in a session, to be sure and send the commant to the
> correct one. But I couldn't figure it out.  I'm using the 'screen
> /serial/port/dev' form of the screen command, which doesn't seem to
> support the n argument that lets you specify the window number
> explicitly.  'screen -list' says it lists sessions, and indeed its
> output doesn't seem to show window numbers. I think a general cleanup
> of the description of the options controlling and specifying sessions
> and windows would be worthwhile.

As a long-time user, it doesn't strike me as inconsistant.. perhaps not
as clear as it should be. But then I'm probably so used to that man
page..

Maybe you could send in a doc patch that suggests a clearer formulation
to the maintainers and they'll take it from there..?

CJ

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