bstansell / conserver

Logged, multi-user access to device consoles
https://www.conserver.com/
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
129 stars 38 forks source link

console up/down help text is non-symmetric #57

Open dannf opened 3 years ago

dannf commented 3 years ago

I've used conserver for over a decade and have found it incredibly useful. One tiny thing that has always bothered me is that it's difficult to tell from the help output that the ^Eco and ^Ecd are symmetric operations:

d       down a console
o       (re)open the tty and log file

While it's ingrained in my muscle memory now, I find new users tend to have a similar issue. Perhaps it'd be easier understand if the verbs were obviously symmetric - down/up, (re)open/close or even disconnect/connect, and if the targets were both console or both tty and log file. One option, trying to retain as much of the mnemonics as possible:

d       down connection to console
o       up/(re)open connection to console
bstansell commented 3 years ago

Wow...I never mentally went there (since I've been involved in this code for so long and lost perspective), but you are 1000% correct. These messages (and their equivalents in other parts of the docs) should definitely be updated to show their symmetry and fix that goofy wording. Thanks!