Closed
Bug 60085
Opened 24 years ago
Closed 15 years ago
about:commandline
Categories
(Core Graveyard :: Cmd-line Features, enhancement, P3)
Core Graveyard
Cmd-line Features
Tracking
(Not tracked)
RESOLVED
WONTFIX
Future
People
(Reporter: timeless, Unassigned)
References
()
Details
Attachments
(2 files, 6 obsolete files)
We need a way to output a long list of command line options with detailed descriptions (possibly in some way that different types of style sheets would display more or less granularity). This became apparent wrt -compose.
Comment 1•24 years ago
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seth has suggested adding a url to the -help content --ie, it could point to this.
Component: XP Apps → XP Apps: Cmd-line Features
Comment 2•24 years ago
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having about:commandline is a neat idea. adding alecf to the cc list.
Comment 3•24 years ago
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Copying Steve Rudman. We're thinking about creating a document that describes the command line options, so we should combine efforts here.
Comment 4•24 years ago
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Since Don has left, Vishy is taking his bugs in bulk, pending reassignment. thanks, Vishy
Assignee: don → vishy
Comment 5•24 years ago
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I'm attaching a first draft of a document listing the command line options that I know about. Please take a look and let me know: - what I've left out - what I've gotten wrong - where I've written incorrect syntax (missing quotation marks? spaces?) Thanks!
Comment 6•24 years ago
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s/Windows (95, 98, and NT) and Linux/most/ s/Netscape 6/Mozilla and derivatives/g <if you don't mind> empty parameter fields should not have cells s#or#<i>or</i>#g <I think I want italic, but i might be wrong. Maybe we want all switches in bold?> We need to be able to show that parameters are required or optional. Defined terms should be <a id> and <a href="#"> Command before Result, don't put the cart before the horse ;-) [Profile Name] [File_Name] either use spaces or use underscores. Print the ./mozilla-bin version that's too unixy. If we do that now for xp please file a bug. JavaScript console should be after chrome. Editor should be after JavaScript Console (before MailNews) Version after Help Splash after version Installer After Splash width after Installer, height after width there's also a -nosplash, and a -quiet. Someone else will list what you're missing. However, the goal of this bug is for mozilla to be able to generate a page similar to this, so I guess we'll use your page as a style guide.
Comment 8•24 years ago
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verah - we're not putting a document in the product like this.. your document looks more like something that belongs on a web site (like www.mozilla.org) - about:commandline is going to be a runtime-generated document which describes all commandline options that have been registered with the currently running mozilla, it's for developers...
Comment 9•24 years ago
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Yes, see my original comment above -- we (info design) are creating a document similar to what this bug is requesting, so I wanted to combine efforts. (Our document will be posted at DevEdge or other appropriate location.)
Comment 10•24 years ago
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Timeless -- thanks for your input; I'll do a second draft soon. I'm thinking that for my version (as opposed to the about:commandline version) I should list the desired action ("Start with the Profile Wizard") first, and then the method of achieving the result. My version is more of a "how to" document; about:commandline is more of a reference. I dunno, though... I started out with it the other way around, as you recommend, and would easily go back to that if people think it looks funny with the cart before the horse.
Comment 11•24 years ago
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verah - all I mean is that this bug is for making something similar to about:plugins (try it) - not a how-to document or anything.. if you want to start a new bug for that, or just start the document, feel free.
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Comment 12•24 years ago
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OK, that' fine... so it seems like you're saying that you don't want the information I collect about the command line options. Fine, I'll keep it to myself! (Removing myself from the list of cc's.)
Comment 13•24 years ago
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I don't get it. Why wouldn't you build this from vera's docs? Why do you want this as an about: url? Are you going to build the page by querying the dom? Putting this info into an about url seems fairly useless. Who would ever think of typing "about:commandline"? I think it would be a lot more useful as "mozilla -h" and/or as a help menu item. Come to think of it, it would be nice to make about:plugins available from the help menu as well.
Reporter | ||
Comment 14•24 years ago
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The Help menu is very much broken architecture wise. I do have Help>About Plugins. But that's _ALL_ I have because we put the about menu into the wrong overlay. about:commandline is an about because we expect it to be dynamic, like plugins, the components you have could match features that will never be included in netscape6 online help. The other reason I want it as about: is that the commandline text is really too long for -h, there are too many options people might use and there is too much information about those options that people might need. Once we get a good menu overlay architecture (and I think jag is working on xbl for it, hyatt and ben know what is needed) hooking up about:plugins, about:commandline, and others will be easy. But until then it's a mess. Maybe i'll dig up my javascript that emulates the future XBL so people can try to build the menu architecture now.
Comment 15•24 years ago
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Netscape Nav triage team: this is not a Netscape beta stopper. Info design should go ahead and create this document for the website for DevEdge, but not prior to putting it in the product.
Keywords: helpwanted,
nsbeta1-
Comment 16•23 years ago
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Marking nsbeta1- bugs as future to get off the radar.
Target Milestone: --- → Future
Comment 17•23 years ago
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This would be a good way to solve bug 26761 which is about -version and -help not working. -help would bring up about:commandline -version would bring up about: The summary of commandline options could be dynamically generated in the future, but for now I think we should just get it in there. Perhaps there could be a link on the page to a more detailed description in the help system.
Comment 18•22 years ago
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adding self to cc list
Comment 19•22 years ago
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the zip file contains the path of the locations where the files that are new to the tree are going, then apply the zip. After that, run mozilla and try about:commandline and about:sink - That is Bug 122411 - Mozilla does not have a kitchen sink that I included in this patch since they overlap and therefore, it would be extra work to fix the other later.
Comment 20•22 years ago
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Sorry, I meant apply the diff, not apply the zip. It's a diff -u.
Comment 21•22 years ago
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what do we need this for? use "mozilla -help". true, it doesn't work on windows, but that's bug 26761. if you really _need_ to implement this, generate it in C++ code and share the data between nsAppRunner.cpp and this code. Else this _will_ get out of sync.
Comment 22•22 years ago
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Comment 23•22 years ago
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Some people mentioned that it might be better to have the commandline options on mozilla.org. For a second, I thought that was a good idea - but after thinking about it, I realized that it might not be consistant with the version that people are running. Therefore, having it in the code would be better. I'll look into what Chris mentioned about sharing it with the C++ code.
Comment 24•22 years ago
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Ignore the the current patch. I am going to make the page dynamically created by C++. about:commandline could be brought up for mozilla -help on windows versions other than windows xp (which seemed to have fixed the problem in bug 26761). Also, people were mentioning putting commandline options in the help menu, or in the help system. It could just internally load about:commandline. Some people say we don't need this, but I would much rather type about:commandline than type mozilla -help. I imagine many people are like me (and remember - not everyone using Mozilla prefers using Linux over Windows). Windows users generally would much rather do it this way since mozilla probably isn't in their path like it is on linux.
Comment 25•22 years ago
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Someone should look over the wording for this - cc'ing MPT. I can see a few obvious things myself: * 'Commandline' (in the heading) should be 'Command Line'. * It's 'Mac OS X' and not 'Mac OSX'. * Similarly, it's 'BeOS' not 'Beos'.
Comment 26•22 years ago
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Why is the font at the bottom different from the rest of the file?
Comment 28•22 years ago
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Biesi: Are you still in favor of a dymaically created file? The only issue I have with that is that it shouldn't be piped directly to the window, but should be parsed and be placed within an attractive web page to look professional.
Comment 29•22 years ago
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>Biesi: Are you still in favor of a dymaically created file?
well, yeah, I am; but I'm not the module owner or anything, and I wouldn't try
to hold up a non-dynamic patch...
Comment 30•22 years ago
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Let's get this puppy moving. Here is the newest copy of the about:commandline please make comments on what needs to be changed...
Comment 31•22 years ago
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The first part of the patch, place in mozilla/xpfe/global/resources/content/nsAboutCommandline.html Comments please.
Attachment #20733 -
Attachment is obsolete: true
Attachment #81359 -
Attachment is obsolete: true
Attachment #81420 -
Attachment is obsolete: true
Attachment #108719 -
Attachment is obsolete: true
Comment 32•22 years ago
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Please review this regardless of the comments on the html file.
Comment 33•22 years ago
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Please change "Communicator 4.x" to "Netscape 4.x"
Comment 34•22 years ago
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And also spell JavaScript correct. It's "JavaScript" not "Javascript"
Comment 35•22 years ago
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please mention on the page that to use -chat, Chatzilla must be installed. same for other parameters which require an optional component. and I don't think you should point to a bugzilla bug in this file. I'd just say "This is a known bug."
Comment 36•22 years ago
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"Print the ./mozilla-bin version" should say: "Prints the Mozilla version. Only available on non Windows platforms." "Print the information in this table" should say: "Print the information in this table. Only available on non Windows platforms."
Comment 37•22 years ago
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First paragraph: the order the Windows versions are listed in ("95, 98, ME, 2000, XP and NT") seems strange. "95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP" would make more sense. And it should be "Mac OS", not "Macintosh", as that's the name of the operating system. The Unix variants should be listed before BeOS as they're more common. The next paragraph gives way too much detail. The important information is that -help and -version don't work on Windows, not why. Just remove it and place explainations next to the relevant commands, as Henrik said: > "Print the ./mozilla-bin version" should say: > "Prints the Mozilla version. Only available on non Windows platforms." > > "Print the information in this table" should say: > "Print the information in this table. Only available on non Windows > platforms." Personally, I would phrase these a little differently though: "Display the Mozilla version (not available on Windows)." "Display the information in this table (not available on Windows)." Use "Display" not "Print". To most people, "Print" involves paper. :-) Aren't there some command line options missing (e.g. -quiet)? Finally, some examples of complete commands would be good.
Comment 38•22 years ago
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This is a summary of the command line options from linux (~/programming/netscape/mozilla/obj-i686-pc-linux-gnu/dist/bin)> mozilla -help Usage: /usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin [ options ... ] [URL] where options include: GTK options --gdk-debug=FLAGS Gdk debugging flags to set --gdk-no-debug=FLAGS Gdk debugging flags to unset --gtk-debug=FLAGS Gtk+ debugging flags to set --gtk-no-debug=FLAGS Gtk+ debugging flags to unset --gtk-module=MODULE Load an additional Gtk module X11 options --display=DISPLAY X display to use --sync Make X calls synchronous --no-xshm Don't use X shared memory extension --xim-preedit=STYLE --xim-status=STYLE --g-fatal-warnings Make all warnings fatal Mozilla options -height <value> Set height of startup window to <value>. -h or -help Print this message. -installer Start with 4.x migration window. -width <value> Set width of startup window to <value>. -v or -version Print /usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin version. -CreateProfile <profile> Create <profile>. -P <profile> Start with <profile>. -ProfileWizard Start with profile wizard. -ProfileManager Start with profile manager. -SelectProfile Start with profile selection dialog. -UILocale <locale> Start with <locale> resources as UI Loca le. -contentLocale <locale> Start with <locale> resources as content Locale. -remote <command> Execute <command> in an already running Mozilla process. For more info, see: http://www.mozilla.org/unix/remote.html -splash Enable splash screen. -chat Start with an IRC chat client -addressbook Start with the addressbook. -news Start with news. -jsconsole Start with Javascript Console -edit <url> Start with editor. -chrome <url> Load the specified chrome. -mail Start with mail. -compose <url> Start with messenger compose.
Comment 39•22 years ago
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This can be used as a placeholder until we hook up the dynamic handler, which isn't as trivial a task.
Updated•22 years ago
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Attachment #108721 -
Attachment is obsolete: true
Updated•22 years ago
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Attachment #108722 -
Attachment description: Here is the patch, make sure you put the previous html file in too → Here is the patch, make sure you put the html file in too.
Attachment #108722 -
Flags: review?(cbiesinger)
Comment 40•22 years ago
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Updated•22 years ago
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Attachment #108766 -
Attachment is obsolete: true
Updated•22 years ago
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Attachment #108857 -
Flags: review?(cbiesinger)
Comment 41•22 years ago
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Comment on attachment 108857 [details]
New Validated HTML 4.0 Transitional mozilla/xpfe/global/resources/content/nsAboutCommandline.html
some comments:
-news: you should mention here as well that mail & newsgroups must be
installed; same for addressbook. but maybe you should rather group them somehow
and mention it above the group.
Note that composer is not optional, so no need to mention that it must be
installed for -edit.
o The hyphen (-) delimits an action type.
what is an action type?
Also, you must get module owner review for this.
Attachment #108857 -
Flags: review?(cbiesinger) → review?
Comment 42•22 years ago
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Comment on attachment 108722 [details] [diff] [review] Here is the patch, make sure you put the html file in too. +static const int kRedirTotal = 5; // sizeof(kRedirMap)/sizeof(*kRedirMap) note, this line of the patch will be rotted as soon as the tree unfreezes. the patch looks ok to me, but as I said above, get module-owner review (from law I think)
Attachment #108722 -
Flags: review?(cbiesinger) → review?
Comment 43•22 years ago
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I haven't gotten a chance to look at the commandline service, but the service
needs to hold more information than just the command and its results so we can
do context-senstive help. (i.e. -help quiet) which displays a lot of
information. Also the data structures use to store this need to be such that
the data can be easily extracted to format within tables on web pages, etc.
If you look at attachment 108857 [details], we need the service to have examples,
information about quirks, listing of parameters with key values that are
mapped to commands, etc etc.
You can get an idea of what I mean by trying CVS.
Comment 44•22 years ago
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Would a command line parser that also could hold examples, context-senstive information, etc be too high-level for nspr?
Comment 45•22 years ago
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Or would it be for XPCOM? We need a better command line service if we want other people to use Mozilla technologies to build their apps.
Comment 46•22 years ago
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I added bug 184788 about dynamic processing about:commandline so we can put this one in for the moment and mark it fix once the patch is approved.
Updated•22 years ago
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Attachment #108722 -
Flags: review? → review?(timeless)
Updated•22 years ago
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Attachment #108857 -
Flags: review? → review?(timeless)
Comment 47•22 years ago
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Removing helpwanted keyword. Asking timeless for review.
Keywords: helpwanted
Reporter | ||
Comment 48•21 years ago
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Comment on attachment 108722 [details] [diff] [review] Here is the patch, make sure you put the html file in too. the filename doesn't match most of the other about filenames. get law's r= if you can, i'll review a dynamic patch but have no interest in a static patch.
Attachment #108722 -
Flags: review?(timeless) → review?(law)
Attachment #108857 -
Flags: review?(timeless) → review?(law)
Comment 49•21 years ago
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re attachment 108857 [details] * -p is not case sensitive * -chrome should be used for chrome loading, url loading should be done simply by "mozilla url" * I hate the [table of contents] links, can we get rid of 'em? * We should add info on -compose parameters * We should link -remote to the remote command page see bug 58313 attachment 122708 [details]
Updated•21 years ago
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Comment 50•19 years ago
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Ben, is this easier or harder after the commandline work you have done (or started?) I also assume you would [as well] like it dynamically populated rather than any-sort-of static page.
Updated•18 years ago
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Assignee: law → nobody
QA Contact: bugzilla
Updated•18 years ago
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Attachment #108857 -
Flags: review?(law)
Updated•18 years ago
|
Attachment #108722 -
Flags: review?(law)
Updated•15 years ago
|
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 15 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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Description
•