Package: grep-dctrl
Version: 2.6.7
Severity: wishlist
Hi,
Looking at the man page for grep-dctrl, it appears to me that
the plethora of lines in the synopsis section (8) obscures the fact
that we are talking about a suite of tools with similar calling
patterns, that operate in two modes:
a) informational; where you get information about the program
itself, and is invoked with these options:
/command/ --copying|-C | --help|-h | --version|-V
Note the grouping, which should make it more obvious that
-C == --copying, and so on
b) operational, where the calling pattern is
/command/ [options] predicate [ file ... ]
Command can be one of
grep-dctrl, grep-status, grep-available, or grep-aptavail.
It would also be nice to point out early that these programs
are aliases to grep-dctrl, but just act on different data sources:
grep-status looks at the DPKG status file (which looks at packages
installed on the system, currently or in the past)
grep-available looks at the DPKG available file (which looks at
packages available, essentially all packages in repositories
that are listed in /etc/apt/sources.list)
grep-aptavail looks at the ....
grep-dctrl is the actual command.
Indeed, looking at what I have written, I think the synopsis
should *NOT* list all 8 variants. It should say
a) ....
grep-dctrl --copying|-C | --help|-h | --version|-V
b) ....
grep-dctrl [options] predicate [ file ... ]
and then mention that
grep-status [args] == grep-dctrl [args] status
grep-available [args] == grep-dctrl [args] available
grep-aptavail [args] == grep-dctrl [args] ????
Those 8 synopsis lines obscure the fact that there is just one
command, and three shortcuts, and one needs only learn one set of
syntax, which makes the man page far less intimidating. One can make
things obscure by too much verbiage.
Secondly, the term predicate is a precise logic term, but is
perhaps not as accessible to the common user (think grandma) as the
term filter, and indeed, these predicates to tend to select and
modify (in other words, filter) the results. Also, Disjunct and
Conjunct are scary. Look at how man perlop explains operators
similar to these with words less scary to non CS people.
It would help if the description also is separated out to
discuss options, filtering expressions and operators for these
expressions, and files, in separate paragraphs;
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The options are divided into those that affect filtering results,
those that affect output formatting, and others.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Filtering expressions can be negated and/or combined in any fashion,
and you can specify how the filtering expressions are aggregated.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
======================================================================
You must give a search predicate on the command line ==>
You must give a filter (search predicate) on the command line.
======================================================================
And so on.
Atomic predicate modifiers ==> filter terms/ expression
Predicate connectives ==> operators??
manoj
running out of steam
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.12.2-skas3-v9-pre4
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Versions of packages grep-dctrl depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.5-4 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
grep-dctrl recommends no packages.
-- no debconf information
--
Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy'.
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/>
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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