On Thu, Dec 02, 2010 at 07:05 PM, Grissiom said:
> tab completion is great. But I think the reason that help in fish
> launch a browser is for highly desktop integration. Look at "open",
> "mimedb", why we need them in a terminal? It's intend to be used
> within a DE.

I agree, the simplest and friendliest thing to do is to open up a
browser pointed to an HTML help page.  This is why I was working
on making browser selection as robust as possible.  I also wanted
to make sure help was reasonably available inside of a vconsole,
otherwise it is going to be a really bad idea to make fish the
default shell.

> I'm not the maintainer nor a BDFL in fish development. But I think
> changing the original design is bad. It might be good to add but it
> intend to be wrong to remove.
> 
> I won't object display help in terminal as long as:
>   1, changes go into fish-next

I feel like I'm a newbie, a downstream user, sending patches
upstream.  I have no idea where they should go.

>   2, "help" should keep the old behavior except some bug fix(check
> whether DISPLAY is local and other)

Agreed.  Principle of least surprise.

>   3, new command should have an other name. "help-term" might be OK.
>       IMHO, a new option in old help is not as good as a different
> name because users can use command tab completion in order to type
> less when they want help.

I don't know.  Maybe we just have our wires crossed.  ISTM the
ability to display help inside a terminal should be built-in to
the help command.  The strategy as I see it is to have fallback
positions in case our first choices don't work.  The priority is:

   1) graphical browser
   2) text based browser
   3) man pages**

   ** there are only man pages for fish commands/functions and
   system man pages.  Someday it would be nice to add more man
   pages but that's just an idea now and I have no immediate
   plans to implement it.

I think we are close to getting a more robust help function
out the door.  IMO the final step should be to fine-tune the
UI, mostly deleting or renaming options.  Take a look at version
1.04 (soon to be posted).  I think you might be okay with it.
If not, I'm willing to make further changes.

I think I'm at fault for causing the mis-communication here.
In the midst of a discussion about the new help.fish that I
hope will be ready this week, I started talking about more
theoretical issues and possible directions of future
development.


Peace, James

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