Re: [PATCH 5/5] gitk: avoid constructing dialog titles from text pieces

From: Mark Levedahl <mlevedahl@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 8, 2026, 14:55 UTC
Message-ID: <433a3e74-c66e-40a3-9971-c8cb9692967d@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <b1d397e1-ab2d-439e-ba45-0ade2c216afa@kdbg.org>

On 8/8/26 6:00 AM, Johannes Sixt wrote:

Show 23 quoted lines

> Am 07.08.26 um 16:37 schrieb mark:
>> This with the prior patch should help translation due to use of more common idioms and
>> complete phrases rather than jargon. Good.
> "Complete phrases" and "jargon" are words I need for the commit
> messages! Thank you :-)
>
> Now, with a fresh eye, I see that we have text like this:
>
> 	Diff: old lines background
>
> This looks more like an assemblement of words and jargon than a phrase
> in natural language. Any suggestions for improvement? How about
>
> 	Background of old lines in diffs
>
> Sounds a bit clumsy.
>
> (In this case I prefer to say "diffs" rather than e.g. "patch text",
> because we are looking at differences between versions, "diffs", and not
> patches. Also, we already have "diff" in multiple other places in the UI.)
>
> -- Hannes
>

I'm ok with using "Diff" as a common identifier for this here. gitk is parsing commit diffs from git, showing each hunk separately. I'd also rather not use patch. The UI already shows "new version" and "old version", so using new lines and old lines is consistent.

But, one thing missing, hinted at by your suggestion "Background of ..." is that the clear definition of what is being affected is poorly expressed. A complete description of each item would require a paragraph, probably with an example image. Trying to compress into a few words will always exploit context and presume some common language we expect a git/gitk user to understand or be able to learn in context.

Maybe some extra words and categorization would help. Consider using a longer category description to provide common information, for instance:

  -General Canvas Area
                           Background
       Marked Lines Background
                              Main Text
                        Selected Text
                              Link Text
    -Commit Differences
                          old line text
                        new line text
             -old line background
       etc.

etc, where the lines beginning with "-" are just separators and do not have an associated color selection button.

Mark

Mark