Clap: Custom Help Formatting Papercuts

[mitsuhiko]

This is some ideas that would make the usability of custom help pages significantly better. Currently the problems mostly involve subcommands.

Subcommand Name in Help Page

Currently if you have a binary like foo-bar and a subcommd named blub-blah the help page always formats the first line as foo-bar-blub-blah. There is no option to make it show up as foo-bar blub-blah which makes a lot more sense for many applications.

Longer version of about()

Currently for the main command one can use about() to inject longer text (somewhat, rewrapping does come up as an issue) however about() is used for subcommands in the listing so that cannot get too large.

Would it be possible to introduce a new explanation() command that accepts a list of "paragraphs" that are rendered after USAGE but before OPTIONS? Eg:

App::new("my-subcommand")
    .about("Does something")
    .explanation(&["paragraph 1 with some text", "paragraph 2 with some text"])

Each paragraph itself would be rewrapped and a double newline inserted between paragraphs. Embedded newlines within a paragraph would most likely have to be preserved. Not sure if there is already support for this sort of stuff.

[mitsuhiko]

For context: sentry-cli (https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-cli) currently has really bad help pages because it's a massive effort to customize them for each subcommand without replacing the entirety of the help system.

[kbknapp]

I've been contemplating adding something similar to this for args to allow a short version of the help and a longer one. This would probably fit nicely with what you're requesting.

One question though, why a list of paras instead of a single blob of text which could include its own paras?

Aside: you could use App::template in the mean time to accomplish this until I get this exact request implemented.

[mitsuhiko]

The paragraphs might be unnecessary if the text wrapper is paragraph aware.

[kbknapp]

This should be closed with v2.23 that was just released

[mitsuhiko]

I just saw that you added long_about. Sadly it works nothing like what this ticket suggests. Here is how it works currently:

If you pass --help the subcommand list shows the long about, if you pass -h it shows the short about. On the subcommand's help page only the short about is shown at all times.

Instead what I am looking for is that a) -h either does not exist or does the same thing as --help and that the long help is only used on the subcommand's own help page.

[kbknapp]

@mitsuhiko in that case, if you don't use about and only use long_about, it should do what you're looking for.

[mitsuhiko]

Bit then it shows thevlong help texts in the subcommand list which is what
I do not want.

Regards,
Armin

On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 11:23 Kevin K. [e-mail] wrote:

@mitsuhiko https://github.com/mitsuhiko in that case, if you don't use
about and only use long_about, it should do what you'r elooking for.

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[kbknapp]

Ah ok, I misunderstood. Then using templates is probably the best way.

```rust
let TEMPLATE = "

{bin} {version}
{author}
{about}

USAGE:{usage}

EXPLAINATIONS:
{after-help}

FLAGS:
{flags}

OPTIONS:
{options}

ARGS:
{positionals}";

App::new("my-subcommand")
.about("Does something")
.template(TEMPLATE)
.after_help("paragraph 1 with some text nnparagraph 2 with some text");

[mitsuhiko]

That's a massive amount of work though and scales badly with large number
of subcommands. Also requires to customize the template manually depending
on the configuration of the command.

I am aware of that option and I decided against it which is why I opened
this ticket.

Regards,
Armin
On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 11:34 Kevin K. [e-mail] wrote:

Ah ok, I misunderstood. Then using templates is probably the best way.

let TEMPLATE = "\{bin} {version}{author}{about}USAGE:{usage}EXPLAINATIONS:{after-help}FLAGS:{flags}"

OPTIONS:
{options}

ARGS:
{positionals}";App::new("my-subcommand") .about("Does something") .template(TEMPLATE) .after_help("paragraph 1 with some text nnparagraph 2 with some text");

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[kbknapp]

Understood. I've re-opened this issue in order to find a better solution. Thanks for the clear up!

[netvl]

I also encountered this problem. I expected that about and long_about behave like this:

• if one of about or long_about is specified, then it is used for the help message after version/author and for the subcommand description in the parent command;
• if both of them are present, then about is used for the subcommand description and long_about is used for the help message after version/author.

For example, suppose we have a command program and a subcommand do-something. Then if do-something has both about and long_about configured, then program --help displays the following:

program 0.1.0
Program help text here.

USAGE:
    ....

....

SUBCOMMANDS:
    do-something    Text of the short about here

and program do-something --help displays the following:

Text of the long about here.

Maybe containing multiple paragraphs.

USAGE:
    ...

Also, if the program itself has both long and short abouts, the long about should be used for the main description text ("Program help text here." above). I'm not sure whether the short about would be needed for programs then, but if I recall correctly it has also something to do with the completion generation, so it probably remains useful.

In my opinion, such behavior aligns with the intuition why short and longs about texts are really necessary and how they work, and it also allows one to follow the style of full stops usage, when in short abouts there is no ending dot, while keeping the "narrative" format of the long abouts with proper punctuation.

Currently, if long about is configured together with the short about, it is also used for the subcommands descriptions, and not used for the main description text, which seems quite counterintuitive to me.

[kbknapp]

I think the argument can be made that about should always be used for the subcommand list. If one wanted more details you can view that subcommand's help message (which isn't possible in args, hence the long_help).