Re: [Nano-devel] improving two long options

[Eitan Adler]

On 8 July 2015 at 12:35, Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> The idea of "long options" seems to be that they are kind of
> self-documenting, that they describe very consicely and in
> clear words what the option does.  For a long time already
> two of the long options of nano have bothered me: --const
> and --poslog.  What does "const" mean?  It is completely
> unobvious.  Also, why use an abbreviation as a long option?
> Long options can be abbreviated by the user as he/she wishes,
> so the long option should be as long as needed and be much
> more expressive, just like --smarthome, --nonewlines, and
> --quickblank.  So... I would propose --constantshow and
> --positionlog (to match --historylog).  Attached two patches
> make those changes.
>
> The old --const and 'set const' and --poslog and 'set poslog'
> will continue to be recognized and acted upon, but only the
> longer versions will be documented.  Any objections?

Sorry for the delay in replying to this: having self documenting long
options is reasonable.  I'd object to any undocumented behavior: the
old names should be documented as "legacy", "deprecated" or
"compatibility feature" or whatever designation they actually have.

-- 
Eitan Adler