I think it is a great idea! Some time ago, I say about this idea!

I just think you can have two (or more) layers of help. When someone say
curl --help, just show the common thing. Newbie that start using curl just
want to download a URL. Let's assume he will use the most common options
with the most common protocol (HTTP).

Like my last idea, you can introduce this command:
curl --help
curl --help-complete

And there is another idea. Show the help for the protocol
curl --help-HTTP
curl --help-FTP
...

But I think it will create more verbose than help.

I know that for you, it is difficult to say what is common option. But the
community can help to say what need to be in the small help and what don't
need. This is arbitrary, but the newbie don't care about it. He just want
to make it work!

2015-06-07 13:21 GMT-03:00 Daniel Stenberg <daniel_at_haxx.se>:

> Hi friends!
>
> There's little doubt that the huge and alpha sorted --help output can be a
> bit intimidating to users and it can easily make the options you really
> need drown among all the others. We are at over 170 options now and the
> list keeps growing.
>
> What to do about it that will be helpful?
>
> spaceone filed this pull-request https://github.com/bagder/curl/pull/252
> that reorders the list and adds subtitles. The latest incarnation of that
> suggestion can be seen here: https://bpaste.net/show/2ea7b5081e50
>
> I'm however not completely sold on that method as the final solution to
> the problem, so I'm suggesting another take at the problem as detailed in
> my comment to the PR here:
> https://github.com/bagder/curl/pull/252#issuecomment-109327337
>
> What do YOU think?
>
> --
>
> / daniel.haxx.se
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Received on 2015-06-07