RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler) (11/10/87)
Your complaint about using an embedded colon to identify the display argument (I notice I naturally call it an argument, not an option :-) is well taken; I'm not sure why that practice has survived, and it would be nice to see it disappear. Some form of -option is perfectly reasonable. I have no particular argument for or against the use of + and = as option leaders (although their use would seem to cause no more problems than the use of -, except that it "violates the standard"), but I note that you didn't propose how to replace the use of + options. Most Unix commands don't allow you to specify the defaults, so maybe the problem hasn't received widespread attention. I find the "standard" of single-character options rather appalling. Why anyone would codify dismal user-interface design made up long ago by people who hated to type is beyond me. This is not to argue that the current smorgasbord of X interfaces constitutes goodness, just that we should not cause upheaval merely to move from one evil to another. I like having mnemonic multi-character options with the ability to give unambiguous prefixes; the names are easier to remember, and are more likely to correspond to those used in other command line environments I use. Switching to single-character options will entail a fair amount of work; lots of options have potential character-clashes, and some applications like xterm will probably run out of characters, and will almost certainly have completely non-mnemonic choices. Non-trivial indeed. The -R syntax you propose was already in the works, I believe, although with a multi-character name like -xrm. For the record, there has been no real consensus in the replies to date.