On Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:03:49 GMT, David Holmes <dhol...@openjdk.org> wrote:
>> Jan Lahoda has updated the pull request incrementally with one additional
>> commit since the last revision:
>>
>> Adjusting the concise help as suggested: 'using main class of a JAR
>> archive' and '<JarFile>.jar'/'<SourceFile>.java'
>
> src/java.base/share/classes/sun/launcher/resources/launcher.properties line
> 49:
>
>> 47: \ -classpath <class search path of directories and zip/jar files>\n\
>> 48: \ --class-path <class search path of directories and zip/jar files>\n\
>> 49: \ A "{0}"-separated list of directories, JAR
>> archives,\n\
>
> The usual way to express this is with the word i.e. comma-separated,
> semi-colon-separated and colon-separated. Not sure if that is possible given
> the way substitution happens here. Though you could do what the manpage does
> i.e.
>
> Specifies a list of directories, JAR files, and ZIP archives to search for
> class files.
> On Windows, semicolons (;) separate entities in this list; on other platforms
> it is a colon (:).
I was looking into this. I don't like the "On windows <this>, otherwise <that>"
- the launcher knows where it is running, and should provide the appropriate
answer. That's not that big problem, as I think we could inject the
platform-specific text in a way that is localizable (basically have keys like
`java.launcher.opt.concise.header.classpath.windows` and
`java.launcher.opt.concise.header.classpath`, which would contain the whole
text for `--class-path`, and inject the localized result into the (concise)
help).
I also like a bit to show the symbol, not only say its name. So that non-native
speakers don't need to think about the name to symbol mapping. That is also not
that big problem - we could say `colon (":")`, or something like that.
But if I try to do this, the lines tend to get longer, and they are already
quite long. The current line for the class-path in the concise help has already
~85 characters, and adjusting the line to say "semicolon" is 9 characters just
for the word. I am a bit worried the lines may start to wrap in the terminal.
(And I don't want to introduce new lines, as that undermines the very purpose
of this change: make the concise help short.)
Moreover, the standard help in JDK 23 is printing things like:
--module-path <module path>...
A : separated list of elements, each element is a file path
to a module or a directory containing modules. Each module is
either
a modular JAR or an exploded-module directory.
So, overall, I would say that using the symbol is least problematic.
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PR Review Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/21411#discussion_r1808220518
