shells/bash: Options slightly confusing

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 30 May 2013, Freddie Cash wrote:

> On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 7:57 AM, Jerry <jerry at seibercom.net> wrote:
>
>> I agree whole heartily. Unfortunately, all too many ports have
>> options that all cryptic in nature. There really needs to be better
>> documentation as to what the options actually do. Perhaps having an
>> additional file in each port named "OPTDESC", or whatever that would
>> list each available option for the port and exactly what it did would
>> prove useful. It certainly would not be a burden as over 90% of the
>> ports that have either none or just one or two options. Besides, if
>> some maintainer created a port with 40 or 50 configurable options, then
>> they certainly can take the time to fully document them.
>>
>> Isn't long options description support enabled in the ports tree now?  Or
> was that only available via Warren Block's dialogwrapper?  Or maybe via
> dialog4ports?
>
> I remember reading something about this a few months back, where the bottom
> of the screen would show long descriptions of what the option would do, or
> a separate help screen would be available.  Or maybe that was just a
> proof-of-concept?

dialogwrapper did it.  Still does, except the new dialog4ports supplants 
dialogwrapper.

Unfortunately, dialog4ports does not show long option descriptions.  I 
consider long options descriptions that are shown by default to be very 
important.  I think dialog4ports has a way to show a help file on user 
request, but to me, that is a solution to a different problem.