Bug#359948: vorbis-tools: ogg123 undocumentedly requires -d to preceed -f

[Martin Steghöfer]

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 09:40:47 -0900 Britton Leo Kerin 
<bkerin_rb at letterboxes.org> wrote:
 > Actually the man page doesn't really even say that -f is going to
 > require -d, and the error message that you get when you try -f alone
 > doesn't say that you need to have the -d preceed the -f, though this
 > requirement probably makes sense. So it ends up looking like it just
 > doesn't work unless you happen to try switching the options around.

Well, the man page (of both the old 1.1.1-3 version on which the bug was 
reported and the most recent version 1.4.0-4) does say it in the 
synopsis (pay attention to the square brackets):

[ -d driver [ -o option:value ] [ -f filename ] ]

The "ogg123 --usage" output also mentions it and is more explicit:

-f file, --file file
     Set the output filename for a file device
     previously specified with --device.

But I think the documentation can be more explicit in 2 places: The 
"options" section of the man page doesn't mention the condition. And the 
error message after using the "-f" option alone lets you now that "-d" 
is needed, but doesn't say it must precede the "-f" option. I will 
provide a patch to improve this.

Cheers,
Martin