Re: A simple hate today.

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From: Michael Ahlers
Subject: Re: A simple hate today.
Date: 16:45 on 26 May 2006
As this debate has raged on for nearly a week (or more?) now, I think it
is time we propose a new approach to resolve once and for all this "help
switch dilemma."

Common shells should recognize the event of a particular key sequence,
such as "F1" and trigger a standardized function which exists in the
context.  That is, a blank command line will trigger a helpMessage
function in the shell, and if a command is present, the helpMessage
function will be invoked for the given binary.  That function may choose
to print a help message or load a manual.  If command line arguments are
present, it may provide specific details based on some strategy, such as
which argument does the cursor currently rest on or maybe the last one
on the list.  If this hypothetical helpMessage function is not
implemented, such as for legacy binaries, the shell could look up
details from a web service which connects to a known database of manuals
or other information.  If that service is not available, it could simply
query Google with the binary name and any command line arguments the
user supplied, along with details about the platform and distribution.
In the latter case, the user would be asked if they are feeling lucky.
If not, a list of results is displayed in the shell which the user can
select to display in a web browser.  Should the user not find any
relevant information from the query, a service "helpd" will then spam
any related newsgroups with a "help, what does this do?" message,
including the parameters of the Google query.  The helpd process will
then poll the newsgroups for responses to the thread and, ideally, use
some spam filtering mechanism to block flames and requests the user RTFM
(which, ironically, does not exist provided we have gotten this far)
while allowing real responses through.  Once received, these responses
should be shuttled to the mailbox of the user making the request or sent
as SMS messages to cell phone, et cetera.  If all of this does not help,
the user could try invoking the command with a -h, --help flag to get
the arguments.


Satirically yours
There's stuff above here

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