> Hauke Fath wrote:
>Good point. Add to that the man page doesn't become more readable with the
>mixture of short and long options.
	Really?  Take a look at the tar man page.  It looks quite reasonable to
me.
	In fact, I find it more readable than some short-option-only manpages,
although that's really due to a reason independent of whether the options
provided are long or short: the way it is structured clearly separates the
actual option from the text that describes it.  An example of a man page
that does _not_ do this, and is IMO not as readable, is shuffle(1).

>I find that with GNU tools, I hardly ever go with the --long options.

	I certainly wouln't argue that tools should not provide short options,
at least for commonly used options.  Would I be correct in guessing that
your customary usage of GNU tools makes use of what you would consider
commonly used options?  For the times where you do you use long options
would you consider those as options that most people would less commonly
use?
	I think it's entirely natural to use the shorter options when you
are familiar with their usage, but, when dealing with more esoteric 
parameters, having the ability to be more descriptive has benefits.

eric