Re: verifying syntax for optional and replaceable content in man pages

From: Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>
Date: May 30, 2018, 17:54 UTC
Message-ID: <CAGZ79kbdbV8r6Vr06ECOy9XXnBO_r=F-XcQU3WCCtOuCr0cfiQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.21.1805300733440.10096@localhost.localdomain>

On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 4:39 AM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

>
>   willing to submit some patches to standardize the syntax of man
> pages in terms of rendering "optional" and/or "replaceable" content,
> and it seems like "man git-config" would be a good place to start:
>
> SYNOPSIS
>        git config [<file-option>] [type] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] name [value [value_regex]]
>        git config [<file-option>] [type] --add name value
>        git config [<file-option>] [type] --replace-all name value [value_regex]
>        ...snip ...
>
>   can i assume the proper (uniform) syntax for the above would be
> (shortening lines):
>
>   ... [<type>] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] <name> [<value> [<value_regex>]]

So the difference are the angle brackets around 'name', otherwise no change?

>   ... [<type>] --add <name> <value>

all the same but angle brackets around name and value,

>   ... [<type>] --replace-all <name> <value> [<value_regex>]

same.

> and so on. is that the consensus? i wouldn't try to do it all at once,
> maybe just a page at a time to not be too disruptive.

I would think there is consensus for unifying the syntax across all man pages and put variable texts (name, path, key, value, etc) into angle brackets.

I used git-blame to find all the changes throughout history touching the first line of the synopsis (or rather: I used gitk, right click "show origin of line"), and there were no edit wars whether to use angle brackets or not; it looks like nobody cared or paid attention since the first revision of that line, which is

    git-config' [--global] [type] name [value [value_regex]]

from e0d10e1c63b ([PATCH] Rename git-repo-config to git-config., 2007-01-28)

Thanks for taking care of these! Stefan