Re: Re* Re* [PATCH v4 0/3] advice: add "all" option to disable all hints

> Dragan Simic <dsimic@manjaro.org> writes:
> 
>> See, the creation factor is described in the documentation as some 
>> fudge
>> factor, specified as a percentage.  Without going through the actual
>> source code in detail, a question that pops up in my mind is why do we
>> need to use 999 or 9999 as the new default value?  Shouldn't 99 or 100
>> be good enough instead, if it's a percentage?  I'd assume that the 
>> same
>> question might be asked by other Git users.
> 
> It is very much deliberate to choose a value beyond 100.  Setting
> the value to such a large value was designed to force somebody to
> ask that question: "what does the value mean?" [*], and in a sense
> it already has achieved one half of its objective ;-).

> We never had an satisfactory update to the range-diff documentation
> when we discussed this parameter in the past.  It was stated that
> the unit to express the value for creation-factor was called
> "percent", but it seems that nobody had a good explanation that can
> be given to a layperson what that percent means (e.g., what is it
> relative to?  what it means to have that value at 100% as opposed to
> say 50%?).  Somebody should come up with an easy-to-understand
> explanation suitable for users after reading and digesting the
> overly technical "algorithm" section of the manual, and forcing
> ourselves to do a good job at it is the other half of its objective.

> [Footnote]
> 
>  * Having more than 100 as a value that is measured in "percent" is
>    not unusual, by the way.  You can zoom into a picture at
>    magnification level of 400%, for example.