Re: [PATCH] user-manual: mention git gui citool (commit, amend)

From: J. Bruce Fields <bfields@fieldses.org>
Date: Aug 3, 2007, 12:56 UTC
Message-ID: <20070803125601.GA28323@fieldses.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070803030101.GI20052@spearce.org>

On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 11:01:01PM -0400, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Steffen, you seem to be more in-tune with the Mac UI standards
> than I am.  Any suggestions on what I can do in git-gui to make
> this feature more obvious to users?
> 
> I myself use a Mac OS X based PowerBook as my primary development
> system, but I have to admit, I'm not the best GUI developer that has
> ever walked on this planet.  Far far far from it.

You're way ahead of me!

> So I'd really love to do better.  But frankly I'm at a loss here
> and just don't know what sort of change to make.

The one thing that struck me when I fired up git-gui was that it wasn't obvious to me which things I should try clicking on.

For example: the buttons, drop-down menus, and check-boxes all cry out to be played with. But the filenames in the lists at the top are less obvious, and it might never have occurred to me on my own to right-click on the diff hunks at the bottom. That just looks like passive colorized text to me.

I don't know what sort of user-interface conventions say "play with me!", though. Random ideas:

	- maybe the cursor should change shape over the diff hunks (or
	  just the headers?)
	- maybe buttons, hunk headers, file names, etc., should all be
	  in the same color?
	- maybe the hunk headers could benefit from a little more
	  decoration?  I don't know how to do that without just making
	  the display look more cluttered, though.
	- maybe left-clicking on diff hunks should do something too?

I dunno.

--b.