[Xvid-devel] Full review of the help message

[Michael Militzer]

Hi Elio,

thanks, it's a nice patch. Reviewed and applied.

I think the reason why there's no help text for the -zones option is simply
that it's a complex option, hard to use and not easy to find a good help
text for. The documented way of creating zones is using the -z[qw] option.

Best regards,
Michael


Quoting Elio Blanca <eblanca76 at users.sourceforge.net>:

>
> This patch includes a full review of the usage text, which now prints
> the actual value for any option, with some trick.
> For example, you say you want to compress your videos using always a
> max keyframe interval of 150 instead of 300. Well, you can change the
> default value, type `make' and xvid_encraw will always use 150 as max
> keyframe interval from now on (you don't need to type it every time),
> and it DOES print this value in the help message! So you know which
> value you are using, even if you don't ever type it on the command line.
> The further trick is tied to on/off options.
> You say you always want to use the `packed bitstream' option but typing
> the option is boring. So, again, you can change the default value (set
> it to 1) and run `make' and the shiny new xvid_encraw will always
> enable the packed_bitstream feature by default. At that point, the help
> message won't ever print the option needed for ACTIVATING that feature,
> because it is always enabled; instead, it will say you how to DISABLE
> it. Try disabling the same feature (set the value to 0), run make, and
> then the help message will say you how to ENABLE it.
> I think this may help keeping the usage message short yet useful.
>
> There's a new issue I will investigate next time.
> I see the code is able to parse a `-zones' option structured  as
> framenumber,type,weight,options/framenumber,type,weight,options/...
> but - well - I didn't see the whole stuff deep enough.
> The actual help message doesn't tell anything about this, why?
> Is this feature about to be removed?
> Isn't it fully tested?