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pedantry: is there a standard for what should be in the SYNOPSIS?

From
Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca>
Date
Nov 21, 2017, 14:49 UTC
Message-ID
<alpine.LFD.2.21.1711210925530.6795@DESKTOP-1GPMCEJ>
  following up on an earlier question of mine, is there a standard for
what options should be listed in either the SYNOPSIS or the
DESCRIPTION sections of a man page? i ask since i'm seeing some
definite inconsistency.
  in addition to the patch i submitted earlier, here are some other
examples.
  "man git-clone", the SYNOPSIS says nothing about options "--verbose"
or "-v", even though "git clone" supports those options and they're
mentioned further down that man page.
  on that same man page, there are a number of options that have two
supported forms (eg., "-l" and "--local"), but the SYNOPSIS shows only
the short form, while many other man pages show both (for another
example of this, see "man git-clean", which shows only the short
forms).
  also, regarding what seems to be a standard for some options, it
seems that many commands support both options "--verbose" and "-v" to
mean verbose operation (as long as "-v" isn't reserved for some other
option for that command, which occasionally happens). in cases where
"-v" is not being used, is there a reason to not just add it as an
equivalent to "--verbose"?
  the same thing could be said with respect to "-n" (as long as it's
available) always being the short form of "--dry-run". and so on, and
so on.
  oh, and i'm still wondering why some commands feel the need to
explain the function of "--", when that's the sort of thing that more
properly belongs in "man gitcli".
  thoughts?
rday
-- 
========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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Next: Jonathan Nieder
Message 1 of 3 in “pedantry: is there a standard for what should be in the SYNOPSIS?”
  1. Robert P. J. DayNov 21, 2017
  2. Jonathan NiederNov 21, 2017
  3. Robert P. J. DayNov 21, 2017

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