[PATCH] show value requirement and multiple occurrence of option in online help

[FUJIWARA Katsunori]

Hi, Greg.

At Mon, 7 Jun 2010 09:33:41 -0400,
Greg Ward wrote:

> > # HG changeset patch
> > # User FUJIWARA Katsunori <foozy at lares.dti.ne.jp>
> > # Date 1275812700 -32400
> > # Node ID cd639cbaf42f509836852b2d59fd14f4ff08db9c
> > # Parent  0e5ce2325795325e41f6df9203373d2858e88f88
> > show value requirement and multiple occurrence of option in online help
> >
> > this helps users to know what kind of option is:
> >
> >  - no value is required(flag option)
> >  - value is required
> >  - value is required, and multiple occurrences are allowed
> 
> Excellent!  This is a good idea and will definitely improve
> command-line usability.
> 
> But I'm not sure that it's worth the trouble of formally denoting
> options that allow multiple occurrences.  I prefer to do this
> informally in the help text.  E.g. I think
> 
>   -b --branch BRANCH [+]  a specific branch you would like to push
> 
> would be clearer as
> 
>   -b --branch BRANCH    a specific branch you would like to push
> (repeat to push multiple branches)
> 
> IMHO it's not *that* common that it requires a formal notation, and
> the formal notation is novel and unfamiliar.
> 
> I looked briefly at your actual patch, and it feels sensible to me.

Thank you for your comment !

This patch bases on my experience: referring mercurial/commands.py
often to check multiple occurrence-ability of options by cmdtable in
it for ambigous cases :-)

So, I whould like explicit notation for each options, but I also
understand that you feel it as unfamiliar.

OK, I'll post patch without explict "[+]" notation.

And DEVELs, please improve help text of ambiguous options(or command
itself), because I'm not good at English :-)

--------------------
[FUJIWARA Katsunori]      fujiwara at ascade.co.jp(foozy at lares.dti.ne.jp)