Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!ucla-cs!ucla-seas!crowe!plinio
From: plinio@crowe.seas.ucla.edu (Plinio Barbeito)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: standard practices
Summary: Keep things simple and people might follow them
Message-ID: <2231@lee.SEAS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 21 Mar 91 05:20:42 GMT
References: <1991Mar20.204257.26740@convex.com>
Sender: news@SEAS.UCLA.EDU
Organization: SEASnet, University of California, Los Angeles
Lines: 48

In article <1991Mar20.204257.26740@convex.com> rosenkra@convex.com (William Rosencranz) writes:
>
>while on the subject of standards, can i throw in my 2 cents on another
>plead for consistency?
>
>it would be really nice if unix-like programs on the ST (or anywhere, for
>that matter) would include the following command line switches:
>
>	-debug		to turn on internal debugging, if any

In a beta release of something, but for a bugless program?

>	-help		to print a usage synopsis
It would be nice to standardize this.  Do people prefer sticking to
the cryptic (but quick to type and group) single-letter options names, 
and typing the command without arguments to get usage info, or to chuck 
that pseudo-standard and start using descriptive tokens?

>	-version	to print current program version
>	-changes	to print major changes since last rev (or indicate
>			that this is first rev)

[Code deleted...]

>does this sound reasonable? i have adopted this myself for both unix and
>TOS. i just wish P1003.2 would say something about this...

Think what you are doing! You are trying to make Unix user-friendly,  
and force programmers to document their code AT THE SAME TIME.  One of
these would be unreasonable enough :-)

(back to reality)
Anyway, my two cents is that it's a tad too baroque.  Maybe the -help
or -version options would be useful, but it seems like not all 
applications would benefit from the clutter of informing the user that 
he can use an option to see the debugging output, for example.  In the 
interest of speed and size, debugging output should go by the wayside
in most cases, IMHO.

To sum things up, I think the usefulness of your suggestion will 
depend on the specific application in mind ("tiny" versus "big enough
to have an option called -verbose").


plin
--
----- ---- --- -- ------ ---- --- -- - -  -  plinio@seas.ucla.edu 
I don't think, I'm crazy.