Joerg Ostertag (OSM Tettnang/Germany) schrieb: > Hi, > > as most of you already know, I am trying to compile and generate packages for > various software tools inside openstreetmap. For all these tools to be > helpfull, it is absoluteley necessary to have som documentation (man pages) > and Commandline --help output. > So I would like to as al of you to recheck all the tools you wrote or added > some code to if they have a commandlinehelp or even better to have a small > man-page. > If you don't know how to integrate these man-pages, please drop me a small > note and I can assist you in this. > I only don't want to reverse engeneer every single too to find out what it > does. >
Perfectly agree with you here. Some comments: a) Man page in html format It's a good idea to make the man page available in html format (often simply a conversion option). This way it can be made available on the web for a quick look and is also accessible on Windows systems where the normal man page format is usually not readable. b) If no further command line options available - say so Even if the program in question has no command line options (what a shame!), it is very nice if --help just says something like "we don't support further command line options" - so as a user you don't have to search the web to find out exactly that. c) Balance between GUI help and man page Trying to describe GUI programs in a man page doesn't work very well IMHO. To reduce double work, it's usually a good idea to make the GUI related help available from the main menu Help/Contents and put the command line options in the man page. Then link at the appropriate places to each other. d) Windows uses /? Programs especially intended towards windows systems (e.g. the .Net based programs), should better use /? to get the command help. That's the common way here. Of course, a help through --help is a lot better than nothing :-) Regards, ULFL _______________________________________________ dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
