On Wed, 5 Sep 2012 21:36:04 +0100 Justin B Rye wrote:
[Wow! The super-fast JBR strikes again! Thanks a lot for your much
appreciated help, really.]
> Francesco Poli wrote:
> > [...]
> >> * -S <stats> | --stats <stats>
> >>
> >> - Status you want to see separated by comma. Default: [forwarded,done,pending,pending-fixed]
> >> + Status you want to see, separated by commas. Default: [forwarded,done,pending,pending-fixed]
> >
> > Sorry for asking this so late, but I only noticed it now...
> >
> > Shouldn't it be
> >
> > + Statuses you want to see, separated by commas. Default: [forwarded,done,pending,pending-fixed]
> >
> > with the plural form "statuses" of "status"?
> >
> > Or am I completely off-track?
>
> There's something strange going on here - and in the previous line,
> too.
Indeed.
> Note that the synopsis calls them "stats" - even the long option
> is called "--stats"; and "stats" is short for "statistics", not
> anything to do with bug-status filters like "pending-fixed".
Exactly.
And I noticed this issue precisely because translations into other
languages used the appropriate word for "statistics", rather than for
"statuses"... :-(
As soon as I searched for the English meaning of the abbreviation
"stats", I realized what was going on.
Nothing the translators can be blamed for, since the original English
is misleading at best!
>
> Then the next problem is that the user isn't asking to see statuses;
> the user wants to see bugs filtered by status. Things would be
> simpler if it was -F for filters... maybe you could say:
>
> Bug-status filters you want to see matches for, separated by commas. [...]
>
Let's try and find a solution that does not break back-compatibility,
unless it's absolutely necessary to do so.
I think it would be better if the option short and long names were not
changed, so I would like to keep them as they are now (-S and --stats).
I acknowledge that --stats is the wrong abbreviation, but I would
rather avoid gratuitously breaking scripts that the users may have
written to invoke apt-listbugs. Especially during a freeze.
We can hopefully compensate the unfortunate misleading nature of the
--stats long option name with better documentation.
The man page could say something like:
* -S <statuses> | --stats <statuses>
Statuses of the bugs you want to see, separated by commas. Default: [forwarded,done,pending,pending-fixed]
The output of "apt-listbugs -h" could say something like:
-S <statuses> : Statuses of the bugs you want to see
[forwarded,done,pending,pending-fixed,].
Would this be more understandable?
However, it seems to me that the same "problem" is present in the -T
and -s options... The man page currently says:
* -s <severities> | --severity <severities>
Severities you want to see, separated by commas; possible values are critical, grave, serious, important, normal, minor and wishlist. Default: [critical,grave,serious]
You can specify '--severity all' to specify all severities.
* -T <tags> | --tag <tags>
Tags you want to see, separated by commas.
and the output of "apt-listbugs -h" currently prints:
-s <severities> : Severities you want to see [critical,grave,serious], or [all].
-T <tags> : Tags you want to see.
Should these be changed as well (as in, e.g., "Tags of the bugs you
want to see")?
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..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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