Re: Default usability wiki page set up

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jul 13, 10:49pm, Keir Mierle wrote:
} 
} Fair enough. I agree, we do not directly control what goes into the
} /etc/z*, but would make install not clobber these files now?

No, because those files aren't provided anywhere in the source.

} This is a hack, and ugly, but perhaps we could check for the existance
} of a .zshrc, and if not, invoke a 'first time? want some help?' mode

That would be a possibility, though it'd have to look for more than just
a .zshrc, and it'd have to operate only for unprivileged users and only
in interactive mode, etc.

} Cool, I didn't know about compinstall. I tried running it, no luck.
} This is probably debian specific, but with zsh installed, there is no
} hint about where compinstall is.

It's explained in the zsh manual pages (or info files, I'm not a Debian
user so I don't know what it installs with zsh).

Quote:

 To run compinstall you will need to make sure it is in a directory
 mentioned in your fpath parameter, which should already be the case if
 zsh was properly configured as long as your startup files do not remove
 the appropriate directories from fpath.  Then it must be autoloaded
 (`autoload -U compinstall' is recommended).  You can abort the
 installation any time you are being prompted for information, and your
 .zshrc will not be altered at all; changes only take place right at the
 end, where you are specifically asked for confirmation.

} I have another crazy idea: Why not add a standard 'help' command?

There's provision for this included with the zsh sources.  Once again
it's up to the packagers to actually install the files from which the
help is read.  Admittedly, the script that auto-generates those files
probably needs a bit of maintenance that it hasn't received recently.

The command is called run-help rather than just help, because it's
set up to be invoked by ZLE in a manner similar to completion.  Also
because back in the day (zsh is going on 20 years old now, remember)
there was already a "help" command provided with UNIX systems that
did something somewhat different.

Setting up the help is mentioned in the manual, too (see "helpfiles").