Re: [vile] missing initial one-line help

[Thomas Dickey]

On Wed, Mar 07, 2012 at 10:40:06AM -0500, Paul Fox wrote:
> there's a problem with startup messages that i don't understand,
> after a few minutes looking at the code.
> 
> when vile starts, it's supposed to show this message (main.c:945)
>       msg = "[Use ^A-h, ^X-h, or :help to get help]";
> 
> i can't get that message to appear, which is too bad -- i think that's
> a very important initial message.

:-(

I assume it's been obscured a while (vileopts appears in late 2006).
The message is "there", but hidden by other message(s) that get there
first.

I'll see if I can make the message show up more reliably...

> in addition, if vile is run with '-h', and help is unavailable, i get
> left in a buffer containing the single word 'help', with this as
> status and message line:
>     === [vileopts] [view-only] ===============================(1,1) 100% ==
>     [Buffer '[vileopts]' is being displayed]
> 
> none of that is very "help"ful.  :-)
> 
> i think vile used to show something like:
> 
>     [Sorry, can't find the help information]
> 
> or maybe even:
> 
>     "[Problem with help information. Type \":quit\" to exit if you wish]";

the latter - seems that it went away at that time, retaining the
message that you're not seeing.  This is in 9.5l, looking at the
rcs history.
 
> tom -- do you know what's happening here?

yes - it's part of the restructuring that I did to handle multiple
"-c" options on the command-line.
 
> [ i got into this because there's a discussion at work about how
> useful very terse initial guidance can be, when using a new program.
> i was going to use vile's welcoming instructions on how to get full
> help as an example, and discovered that it no longer works! ]
> 
> paul
> =---------------------
>  paul fox, address@hidden (arlington, ma, where it's 43.9 degrees)
> 
> _______________________________________________
> vile mailing list
> address@hidden
> https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/vile

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

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