CLIUtils
A better Help formatter (V2)
This is the new PR I've mentioned to work on in PR #858
A better Help Formatter
See below for images of the new help page
Finally, after a lot of planning, understanding CLI11's codebase, testing and coding, the new default Help Formatter is done. There are a lot of changes to make the help page more readable and closer to UNIX standards, see Changelog below for details. One of the highlights is automatic paragraph formatting with correct line wrapping for App and options/flag descriptions as well as the footer.
A goal was to provide more flexibility and better readability for the help page while providing full compatibility with Apps using CLI11 (no breaking changes and no changes to Apps required). Also better support for different terminal sizes. Users can now specify three new optional attributes: right_column_width_, description_paragraph_width_ and footer_paragraph_width_. See code documentation for more details. The different columns for options/flags now scale with the set column_width_ value: Single dash flags occupy 33% of the set column_width_, double dash flags and options (like REQUIRED) 66%. These new attributes allow for indirectly respecting terminal geometry, footer paragraph formatting has also been added (#355). This PR also implements the issues #353 and #856.
The new help page formatting can also be used as an input for man page generation, since it's oriented on the man page style (#413). help2man can be used to generate man pages from help output (see comment down below for example).
I thoroughly tested this code with all possible combinations of flags, options, positionals, subcommands, validators, ... So far everything works great. I hope this PR looks good and meets all requirements. I'm looking forward to the implementation of this PR into CLI11. If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to comment.
Fixed/implemented issues by this PR
- #353 Better options formatting
- #856 Space between options
- #355 Footer formatting
- #413 Man page generation can be achieved using help2man with the new help formatting
- https://github.com/CLIUtils/CLI11/issues/384#issuecomment-570066436 Better help formatting can be marked as complete
What about the failing tests?
Of course the tests expect the old help text format. This is why 6 of the tests are failing. Since it is a bit of work to migrate the tests to the new help format, I first wanted to push out this PR and get confirmation before I'll update all the tests. So please let me know if this PR gets implemented, what changes should be made and then I'll migrate the tests to the new help format, either in this PR or I'll make a new one.
Changelog:
There are no breaking changes. Every App using CLI11 will work with this new formatter with no changes required.
- Added empty lines at beginning and end of help text
- Removed double new-line between option groups for consistency. Now all sections have the same number of new-lines
- Switched usage and description order
- Only show "Usage"-string if no App name is present. This provides better readability
- Made categories (Options, Positionals, ...) capital
- Changed
ConfigBase::to_configto correctly process capital "OPTIONS"-group (only affects descriptions of the config file, not a breaking change) - Added a paragraph formatter function
streamOutAsParagraphto StringTools.hpp - Made "description" a paragraph block with correct, word respecting line wrapping and indentation (using the new paragraph formatter function)
- Made the footer a paragraph block with correct, word respecting line wrapping and indentation
- Updated documentation for
column_width_to make it more clear - Added new member:
right_column_width_, added getter and setter forright_column_width_ - Added new member:
description_paragraph_width_, added getter and setter fordescription_paragraph_width_ - Added new member:
footer_paragraph_width_, added getter and setter forfooter_paragraph_width_ - Positionals description are now formatted as paragraph with correct, word respecting line wrapping
- Options description are now formatted as paragraph with correct, word respecting line wrapping
- Short and long options/flags/names are now correctly formatted to always be at the right position (also for subcommand options/flags)
- Short and long options/flags/names column widths scale linearly with the
column_width_attribute to better adapt to differentcolumn_width_sizes - Merged PR #860
What's planned for the future?
- I'm thinking of better formatting the options of flags (like REQUIRED, TEXT, INT, ...) and make them also in a seperate column. This way they would also always be at the same position. However I decided against it for this PR, since I wanted them to be as close as possible to the actual flag. With my implementation it is quite easy to add this change in the future.
- Subcommands: I'm planning on better formatting the Subcommands. With this PR only the short and long flags/options of subcommands are better formatted (like it is with the main flags, see images down below).
- Maybe implement a different way to display expected data type options (TEXT, INT, ...). For example:
--file-name=<TEXT>for long flags only and ifdisable_flag_override_is false. - Maybe add something like this: https://github.com/CLIUtils/CLI11/issues/554
Old
New
The new help page requires no changes to existing apps using CLI11.
Here is the code used in the example images:
CLI::App app("A long description\nNew line. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.", "cli-demo-app"); //TUIFM_APP_NAME
app.footer("This is a footer!");
//********************************************************+
// Positional
app.add_option("pos", "A positional");
app.add_option("longpos", "Consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum.");
// Vars
std::string s1 = "";
int i1 = 0;
//********************************************************+
// Config
app.set_help_all_flag("--help-all", "Expand all help");
app.add_option("-f,--filename", s1, "A filename");
app.add_option("-a", "A short name");
app.add_option("-b", "Another short name");
app.add_option("-c,-d", i1, "Double short name, integer");
app.add_option("-r", "Short name with long description. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,\nconsetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est.");
app.add_option("-s", "Short");
// Info group
app.set_version_flag("-v,--version", GetAppVersion)->group("INFO");
// MYGROUP1
app.add_option("-l,--this-is-a-very-long-option-for-testing", "Very long description of a very long flag.")->group("MYGROUP1");
app.add_option("--only-long", "Only one long name")->group("MYGROUP1");
app.add_option("--two-longs,--another-long", "Two long names")->group("MYGROUP1");
help2man and Man pages for CLI11 Apps
This is a man page generated with help2man from the new CLI11 help output (only showing a part of the man page). help2man can be easily used with CLI11 Apps to generate man pages.
To test man page generation for yourself with the new help formatter of CLI11:
- help2man -o manFile.3 ./cli-demo-app
- man ./manFile.3
Important: The App must accept the version flag or else help2man will fail: app.set_version_flag("-v,--version", MyGetAppVersion);
First glance I like this a lot! The help2man will be very useful and we probably want a test to ensure things work with that application.
Is there a standard that follows we can reference?
I will take a closer look at this in the coming days and @henryiii should as well.
This looks like it could resolve several outstanding issues.
I think I want @henryiii to comment on this. If he is ok with it, I can help fix the test cases and go through it in more detail.
This looks great, happy to see someone making the default formatter closer to existing standards. @phlptp Feel free to move forward!
(Sorry for the long delay, I've been busy with scikit-build-core and other things)
I will start working on fixing some of the tests to adjust for this soon. @LostInCompilation are you still available to help finish this up?
Is there a way to make these improvements available in a separate / optional header file so it doesn't need to be rebased when it isn't merged soon enough? I'm new to this, and help output is oddly important.
