[Bug-ddrescue] GNU ddrescue data recovery tool - more suggestions

[wilsonstreet]

ref;
http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html

Hello,

In a previous email, I suggested grouping the options in
terms of related tasks.

I have gone through the options and grouped them in an
example set of groups.
Please forgive any incorrectly named options.

1) Source Options (these commands can be denoted as being
part of group S)
-- block size
-- max-size
-- direct  (how to "correctly set" "sector size" of the
source partition/disk ??? - we can set "clusters",
"block-size", but there is no option to set the "sector
size") 

2a) Data Extraction Options (group DE)
-- try-again
-- max-errors
-- maxerror-rate
-- skip size
-- no-split
-- max retries
-- reverse (note any options that this does not work with, &
ones it does)
-- timeout

2b) Rescue Domain Options (group RD)
-- complete only
-- domain-logfile
-- retrim

3) Output file Options (group O)
-- synchronous
-- force
-- fill=types
-- preallocate
-- sparse
-- truncate

4) Reporting Options (REP)
-- help
-- version
-- quiet
-- verbose
-- binary perfixes
-- generate-logfile (this is currently ambiguous - is it
generate-"logfilename" or "generate-logfile" command?)

5) Other commands
-- cluster             could be in (S) or (DE)
-- input-position      could be in (S)
-- verify-input-size   could be in (S)
-- output-position      could be in (O)

=============================

Ctrl+C exit action

I also noticed that when Ctrl+C is used to interrupt an
operation, the text is printed on screen directly over the
user prompt, which may confuse the user - or worse - panic
the user. It might be clearer to the user if the Ctrl+C
characters appeared elsewhere - say on a line within the
text of the running operation (above the user prompt for the
next command. This line could have a message that says
Ctrl+C (user exit) has not been pressed - if you press
Ctrl+C, the program may delay a little time while it cleans
up , before it confirms that you have pressed Ctrl+C.

=============================

Possibly include information about or actually use system
commands (such as "mount" to find the devices and their
references, maybe also block size, etc. SMART reports to
detect worst partitions first) to get information which is
useful for constructing the command text.
Either include information on these useful commands in the
help file, and/or have some way of calling them up
automatically in a script, to help construct the command
text for ddrescue.

=============================

Yours
Al