[Portland] command line interface inconsistancies

Whipple, Tom tom.whipple at intel.com
Mon Jun 5 09:30:59 PDT 2006


I would like to point out that the interface across the utils is
inconsistent. For example the following 3 commands all have required
arguments, but are different in the way that the arguments are
formatted.

1. $ xdg-screensaver suspend 5
2. $ xdg-su -c 'touch foo.txt'
3. $ xdg-file-dialog --openfile foo.txt

I think that one standard needs to be applied to all of the utils. 

I suggest that as in #1, required arguments have no dashes. As in #3
options with long names (eg --vendor) have two dashes. I would also
suggest that commonly used options have "shortcuts" (eg -h == --help),
where it makes sense.

-tom

___________
Tom Whipple
Intel Corporation - http://www.intel.com/go/linux


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