the behavior of --value is non-obvious

[masukomi]

[edit] this was a ticket proposing the addition of a --default option. It turns out that that was user error / ignorance on my part BUT the documentation should still be improved to make it clear what --value does and how it behaves. (see comment below)

[masukomi]

[redacted after discovering --value (see below)]

[masukomi]

Turns out this is actually a documentation problem, not a code problem

--value serves this function and the visual choice was

> default

Suggested changes:

the help docs say

      --value=""                           Initial value (can also be passed via stdin)

they fail to note 3 important things:

1. --value supersedes --placeholder and any placeholder will not be displayed
2. unlike placeholder the value will be editable
3. unlike placeholder the value will be returned if the user just hits enter.

the tutorial needs to be modified because this example will never work as intended. The --placeholder is never going to be displayed.

SUMMARY=$(gum input --value "$TYPE$SCOPE: " --placeholder "Summary of this change")

Maybe this is indicative of past behavior that somehow got lost?

I still think --default would be a better name for this because it's more self-evident what to expect from it. Maybe we could deprecate ( support but stop mentioning ) value and replace it with --default as well as the suggested documentation?

[polm]

These value names and their behavior (like how placeholder is ignored if value is set) are the same as the HTML <input> element.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input#placeholder

[maaslalani]

@polm This is a great point:

The --value and --placeholder flags behave the same as their counter parts in HTML which I think is beneficial. We might revisit this naming but I this @polm has a great point that these match HTML and I think it makes sense to keep them like this for the time being unless there is a much stronger argument to deviate.

[masukomi]

i believe this ticket has been closed prematurely:

even if you don't change anything about the naming or behavior , there's still the outstanding problems noted above of missing documentation and the example that can't possibly work.

[maaslalani]

i believe this ticket has been closed prematurely:

even if you don't change anything about the naming or behavior , there's still the outstanding problems noted above of missing documentation and the example that can't possibly work.

We can definitely document this behaviour 👍

The example works correctly, the placeholder value will show up if the value (that is pre-filled) is deleted by the user, as shown in the example.