Re: Screensaver support for the Hurd console

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:29:43 +0100,
Alfred M Szmidt wrote:
> Come to think of it, this isn't a bug.  Most if not all GNU programs
> work like this, consider ls:
> 
> ~ $ ls -l RMAIL --help
> usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
> List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
> Sort entries alphabetically across.

Most programs don't support dynamically loadable plugins.  In
particular, ls doesn't.

But there is a point in not changing the behaviour of --help, because
of the behaviour to just add --help to a complete command line to see
the help without running the program (it saves some keystrokes).

However, in that case, there'd be need a new option --plugin-help or
so, which shows the plugin options.

That said, I don't think that just reusing --help and --version is too
confusing, given that you have to know about the -d option in the
first place to get into this tricky situation, and the documentation
for the -d option must say clearly that subsequent options relate to
the plugin, and not the main program.  That same documentation can
also say that all plugins accept at least two options, --help and
--version, and then there is no ambiguity.

Thanks,
Marcus