Can we get #6127 reverted?

It seems to have snuck in with little to no discussion and is

dubious it adds any benefit at all. If anything, it will simply frustrate existing and new users.

Would seem to me the best course of action would be to get it reverted, have some discussion around it and propose any changes based on the percieved need.

Thoughts?

I think the idea general idea is not bad. Running help and seeing 100+ commands can be difficult for new users.

I'd argue a CLI user is used to seeing long-form help. That aside, we both agree it breaks the existing easy-to-use help.

there are some issues with it, yes

honestly I would have expected some discussion around the PR before merging.

It was open for 3 months or so.

I've been away so not been checking, but I hear you. I'm suprised nobody raised an issue until now.

I would be ok with reverting it for now but there are some follow ups PRs that would have to be also reverted.

Thant's frustrating if there is other merged code that will conflict.

I do feel quite strongly it ruins our help though.

not sure if more

grrr

It is nonsense though. It's hardly "advanced" to need to quickly look up the parameters to a command.

help_all would have been a better name IMO

help should be all and dumbed down into help could have been first-use/splash.

s/into/intro/

that would be also ok

if you read what's in the dumbed-down new copy, it's near useless in any case.

"save" and "refresh" are legacy and not needed.

"transfer" misses priority.

"sweep_all" encourages churning, which can be harmful.

It's a terrible change to have got in.

It doesn't even document how to get the details of the commands.

could you open a PR that reverts it?

I was thinking about that but wanted others to weigh in and/or justify why it was merged.

And if a revert PR was the favored approach.

The reason I want to revert is that it is not implemented for the daemon so help and help_advanced display the same thing

making the `Use the "help" command to see a simplified list of available commands.` message useless

I didn't even catch that it only applies to wallet. Another reason to add to the list of why it's a bad change.

"help" should definitely function the same in wallet and daemon.

Yes, I would revert it and then someone can try to add a `guide` or `intro` command for new users.

i dunno. a lot of open source software I use has "help" provide a quickstart, and then there's a command in help to show more advanced options

well not even open source, but command line stuff

i mean, help should be helpful. Not "here's 90000 commands, good luck!"

but i agree it should be the same in daemon and wallet

we can create a gnu info manual that nobody will read!

I kinda like having a succint overall help giving you common commands to do the basics.

"priority" is omitted because most people don't care.

Is the problem that one has to type an extra "_advanced" for the full help ?

(maybe _<TAB> might be enough)

My little grief is that I have to type the long "help_advanced" for every detailed help about a command I know already how it is called, instead of simply "help <command>" like in the good old times

(Maybe already mentioned, looks like my log is incomplete, with gingeropolous out of the blue starting to mention help ...)

Nothing against simply "help" being short and tidy now

Then it seems best to make "help foo" give the whole help, without removing the short blurb for "help", no ?

Yes. As I proposed here: monero-project/monero #6494 Was gingeropolous referring to this, maybe?

I collected already 5 thumbs up emoji with this :)

If nobody shows up in the next few days and shouts "nonsense" or "heresy" I probably will make a PR

Or two, one for the CLI wallet, and one for the daemon

Sounds good if jtgrassie's happy with it, thanks.

help_advanced seems like a massive step backwards in UX

I might have endorsed a patch that paginates long outputs. Like gdb does.

note that even gdb lets you set pagination=off if you don't want that feature

i think if it paged the help file like `less`, it would be fine to keep long

Then maybe just rename help to help_basic and help_advanced to help ?

I think that would be acceptable (as it would revert to the working help)

The commands documented in this abbrev help is still questionable.

help --type=<verbose|advanced|basic> --pager=<more|less>

A lot of the help could be condensed by moving commands like "save" (which are really not needed) to maybe a 'legacy' section. The fact "save" and "refresh" are in this stripped down basic help just emphasizes how useless it is now.

giving flags to help is kinda dicy. you would then need "help help" to be a valid command, to explain how to use the help command.

agreed.

--pager would be a launch/conf option

default pager being `less` would be nice though :)

'less' has an undesirable effect in current GUI terminals though. It issues the altscreen terminal command for its output, and reverts back ot mainscreen when you stop it.

current terminals erase the display when toggling back from altscreen to mainscreen

so whatever you were reading disappears.

'more' is more friendly here because it keeps all text on the mainscreen

I was being jokacious -_-

and really, there's no reason to shell out to an external pager

about less and altscreens bugs.launchpad.net/vte/+bug/452940

FWIW, if we were to page, I'd use an external pager.

Gives you search, page up, all that jazz.

yeah, would be perfectly fine if the damn terminal emulators had correct emulation

as it is, the only usable one nowadays is original Xterm

less is more

:-P

more or less.

back my day, monero help output fit on 12 lines

and i could bootstrap a daemon in a tidepool