Re: git help -t <topic>: list the help of the commands in a given topic

From: Santi Béjar <sbejar@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 11, 2007, 09:04 UTC
Message-ID: <8aa486160712110104v6d12985dq45739ff2fc4cc39@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7v7ijmjayl.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Dec 11, 2007 2:07 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Santi Béjar <sbejar@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > With 'git help -t' lists the available topics.
> >
> > Show a hint to get a longer list when listing the common commands.
>
> I like the idea of making the categorized command list in git(7)
> available, and agree with you that renaming common_cmds[] to cmd_list[]
> and place everything in there would be the way to go.
>
> However, I doubt about your presentation.  Who are the intended
> audience and what is the expected way this is used?

The main reason for this was to be able to show a longer list in git help. But at the end I did this topic thing. The intented audience was the newbies looking at the "git help" output, for them to have a longer list. Then the topic part was intended for intermidiate user looking for even more powerfull commands.

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>
> I highly suspect that it would be much easier to use if you add a mode
> to "git help" that runs the pager over the categoized command list part
> of git(7) manual page, without taking "show me list of topics" nor "show
> commands only in this topic" parameters.  It is highly unlikely that a
> user knows which category an obscure command whose name he wants to
> recall is in, or can guess which category it would be classified in
> after seeing the "category list".  It would be much more likely that he
> finds it easier to scan (perhaps with "/<string>") the command list with
> one line description in the pager.

OK, this makes sense. But I still think that having a longer list in "git help -l?" with the main porcelain commands makes sense. I'll try to do it.

Best regards,

Santi