Frank Thommen - 2020-09-18

Hello,

currently on Linux veracrypt --help

a) prints a list of options with short descriptions to stdout, and

b) opens an graphical window with a differently formatted and more
detailed list of commandline parameters

c) even more confusing: In a non-graphical environment, the
information from the graphical window is printed to stdout
and not the information that is printed to the terminal
in a graphical environment

There are quite a few problems with this behaviour:

a) while the window is open, the terminal is blocked. This conflicts
with the usual and expected behaviour of a "--help" option to print the
usage information to stdout and then exit

b) the window blocking the terminal prohibits to keep open the
documentation for look-ups while continuing to work with veracrypt in
parallel. (I am aware that I could open veracrypt --help &, but as
user I should not be forced to do that for a "--help" option)

c) the window is small and cannot be resized, which is is irritating,
because the list of options is long and the window too small to be
efficiently used

d) the information in the window and in the terminal are differently
sorted, differently formatted and with different level of detail, which
is very confusing. Trying to relate one help to the other is painful
and involves lots of scrolling back and forth

e) the information printed to the terminal depends on the environment
(graphical vs. non-graphical) which is a kind of inconsistency.

If I could wish how veracrypt should behave, then I'd say:

veracrypt --help /always/ prints the short help overview (but
grouped by commands and options) to the screen (stdout, terminal),
independent of the environment

veracrypt --exthelp prints the extended help (as in the graphical
window) to the screen (stdout, terminal)

veracrypt --help --x11 and veracrypt --exthelp --x11 present the
respective help/extended help information in a graphical window which
does not block the terminal.

Cheers...and thanks for VeraCrypt!

 
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