#1562 Giving --help on comand line causes an ugly window with help to appear

[Ville Aakko]

Hi,

After writing code --help on the command line, the help appears in a window with non-monospace font.

This is very cumbersome, difficult to read, distracting, needs to be separately closed with the mouse or keyboard (and may or may not be focused by the keyboard) and breaks basic UI paradigms (don't open a window for a simple --help parameter.

As a rule of thumb, if the user wants help in a GUI they will look it up in the GUI. If a user is entering --help, they are most probably using the terminal and want the help there.

Additionally, no command line instructions should use non-monospace font. The tabbing and spacing is messed up here.

**Stops to reproduce: **
1) Open a terminal emulator (xterm, konsole etc.)
2) Type codeblocks --help

Observed results:

• An UI-paradigm breaking, distracting window appears, which needs to be closed with the mouse or keyboard, with non-monospace font

Expected results:

• A clearly readable instructions should be printed in the terminal where the command was entered.

[Miguel Gimenez]

Monospacing was fixed in [r13737] a month before your post. Regarding the window, C::B is a GUI application, so showing a window is normal.

[Ville Aakko]

Thanks!

I disagree on this part:

Regarding the window, C::B is a GUI application, so showing a window is normal.

I expect to get windows when using the GUI (help dialog), not from the command line. I.e. I expect to get the help dialog via the user interface I request it from.

I am not aware of any other program which would print command line parameters into a GUI window. Hence, I still believe it's a breakage of well established UI paradigms.

However it's not my decision.