[FFmpeg-cvslog] r20822 - in trunk: ffmpeg.c ffplay.c

[Ramiro Polla]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 05:36:54PM +0100, Stefano Sabatini wrote:
>> On date Sunday 2009-12-13 16:33:43 +0100, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
>> > On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 04:15:16PM +0100, Stefano Sabatini wrote:
>> > > On date Sunday 2009-12-13 14:49:14 +0100, michael wrote:
>> > > > Author: michael
>> > > > Date: Sun Dec 13 14:49:14 2009
>> > > > New Revision: 20822
>> > > >
>> > > > Log:
>> > > > Show help if no cmd line options are provided at all.
>> > > > This safes the users time to find out which of -h --help -? works.
>> > >
>> > > I consider this a bad UI policy, a program should show help only when
>> > > it is explicitely requested to do so, that's generating a lot of
>> > > output when the only message displayed should be: "ehy you need to
>> > > specify a file".
>> >
>> > i dont agree, maybe it could be abbreviated but just what you suggest
>> > is not usefull. Any user alraedy knows he has to specify a file
>>
>> Thinking twice at it this is not true, consider -version.
>>
>> So a better behavior would be:
>>
>> $ ffmpeg
>> No arguments specified. Use the -h option for showing the inline help message.
>>
>> This is both more correct and less obstrusive.
>>
>> Well I know that many CLI programs implement this behavior (no
>> arguments -> show help), but I always found that weird and subtlely
>> wrong, as this is doing the program to act in a way which wasn't
>> explicitely requested, I'd prefer to simply *suggest* to the user what
>> she may want to do rather than making the program act like that.
>
> ive no strong oppinon on this, if people want it changed iam not against
> it but the way it was before was really bad, even i at least once tried
> ./ffmpeg --help
> and what plain ./ffmpeg outputed was just useless, it could have said
> "sorry pal, try again" that would have been none the worse

By the way I agree with Stefano. FFmpeg prints out the whole help
which is big enough to exhaust a console's buffer and the last lines
of help don't really help much...

Patch attached. Help on wording is welcome.
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