Change 'magic' to give help without network access
Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 10:07 pm
Hi all,
This is a request to improve magic's friendliness to n00bs, like myself.
'magic' should have a command line option (e.g. help, --help, -h, --h) that tells you briefly what 'magic' is and how to use it.
Why? Well there is no help otherwise, and typing "man magic" will definitely confuse you (since its not the same thing)!
For starters, I'm thinking that the help text you'd see would correspond to what "magic usage" shows now. However it would print this immediately without requiring network access to download a new version etc. It is very unsettling for a command to do something (like update itself) before you can find out what it does!!!
There should be a highlighted note in the displayed text that says something like: "Because magic updates itself before any other operation is performed, network access is essential."
The help text should also give an indication that port 2000 needs to be open for those of us that have firewalls to navigate. Not everybody will think of looking in the magic script to retrieve the port number!
And finally, the help should say 'magic' is not to be confused with the manual entry for magic i.e "magic - file command's magic number file"
Thanks for listening.
Regards,
- Grant.
This is a request to improve magic's friendliness to n00bs, like myself.
'magic' should have a command line option (e.g. help, --help, -h, --h) that tells you briefly what 'magic' is and how to use it.
Why? Well there is no help otherwise, and typing "man magic" will definitely confuse you (since its not the same thing)!
For starters, I'm thinking that the help text you'd see would correspond to what "magic usage" shows now. However it would print this immediately without requiring network access to download a new version etc. It is very unsettling for a command to do something (like update itself) before you can find out what it does!!!
There should be a highlighted note in the displayed text that says something like: "Because magic updates itself before any other operation is performed, network access is essential."
The help text should also give an indication that port 2000 needs to be open for those of us that have firewalls to navigate. Not everybody will think of looking in the magic script to retrieve the port number!
And finally, the help should say 'magic' is not to be confused with the manual entry for magic i.e "magic - file command's magic number file"
Thanks for listening.
Regards,
- Grant.