1130 tweaks

Stephen Weeks MLton@sourcelight.com
Wed, 3 Jan 2001 09:21:43 -0800 (PST)


> The  file  doc/examples/ffi/ffi  should  not be included in the source RPM (I
> think).

Right.  Fixed.

> Yikes: the usage messsage from mlton is huge (sad, but not horrible), but
>     It is 112 columns wide (ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE).
>     It is printed with trailing space characters (also HORRIBLE).
> These REALLY REALLY have to be fixed.  I would think that the table  function
> shouldn't  put trailing white space, but it depends on where else you use it.
> Alternatively, in the List.foreach in  ! usageRef  you  could  trim  trailing
> blanks  before  adding  a  newline at the end.  This fixes the trailing white
> space, but not the length of the comments.  The length also  REALLY  must  be
> fixed.   Either  go for multiple lines or shorten things.  I would argue that
> shorter messages are better since they are just supposed to remind you if you
> kind-of  already  knew  what was going on.  If you don't, the man page is the
> place to go.  Just change the indentation of the whole list to 4  spaces  and
> then be brutal on truncating the messages.

I agree completely.   I vote for shortening.

Matthew, part of the width problem is the "Experimental" -native flags.  I see
three possibilities for such flags in the release.

* Remove them from the message.
* Keep them in the message, but remove the "Experimental" label (and probably
  the default as well for space reasons)
* Have two different usage messages, one for the real switches and one for the
  experimental switches.

Any thoughts?  My vote is for the second, just because the programming's a bit
simpler and the line between experimental or not is kind of fuzzy anyway.