Re: [PATCH v5 11/12] doc: revisions: show revision expansion in examples

From: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
Date: Aug 12, 2016, 22:45 UTC
Message-ID: <7765A995ADF6470DBA99D000AF7B5538@PhilipOakley>
In-Reply-To: <f418c41b-f590-0b6a-236a-c109a7296434@xiplink.com>

From: "Marc Branchaud" <marcnarc@xiplink.com>

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> On 2016-08-12 03:07 AM, Philip Oakley wrote:
>> The revisions examples show the revison arguments and the selected
>> commits, but do not show the intermediate step of the expansion of
>> the special 'range' notations. Extend the examples, including an
>> all-parents multi-parent merge commit example.
>>
>> Sort the examples and fix the alignment for those unaffected
>> in the next commit.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
>> ---
>> new
>> Cc: Jakub Narębski <jnareb@gmail.com>
>> ---
>>  Documentation/revisions.txt | 19 +++++++++++++------
>>  1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/Documentation/revisions.txt b/Documentation/revisions.txt
>> index 70864d5..ac7dd8e 100644
>> --- a/Documentation/revisions.txt
>> +++ b/Documentation/revisions.txt
>> @@ -326,16 +326,23 @@ Revision Range Summary
>>    as giving commit '<rev>' and then all its parents prefixed with
>>    '{caret}' to exclude them (and their ancestors).
>>
>> -Here are a handful of examples:
>> +Here are a handful of examples using the Loeliger illustration above:
>>
>> +   Args   Expansion       Selection
>
> I think "Result" would be better than "Selection" here.

I wanted to avoid that. I feel that "Result" is too general. I had thought about using the 'ed' rather than 'ion' word endings, but that would require (to my mind) the noun e.g. "Expanded arguments" and " Selected commits" (still could be - see below), while the 'ion' endings felt complete. The Result is what is shown in thable below these headings ;-)

>
> Also, shouldn't all the ^ in these examples be {caret}?  (I likely just 
> don't understand the rationale for using {caret} in some places and ^ in 
> others...)

All the conversions appear to work. I think that asciidoc is viewing these a blocked text without any expansion. Plus, it would be horrendous trying to check the formatting (endless reruns of make.. ... .. )

Show 19 quoted lines

>
>>     D                G H D
>>     D F              G H I J D F
>>     ^G D             H D
>>     ^D B             E I J F B
>> -   B..C             C
>> -   B...C            G H D E B C
>> +   B..C   = ^B C          C
>> +   B...C  = B ^F C        G H D E B C
>>     ^D B C           E I J F B C
>>     C                I J F C
>> -   C^@              I J F
>> -   C^!              C
>> -   F^! D            G H D F
>> +   C^@    = C^1
>
> I have a mixed reaction to showing this "C^1" expansion, and the "B^1 B^2 
> B^3" one as well.  I see the appeal of showing the parent notation, but 
> really that was already explained to death in the first section.

This was the whole point. For some (e.g. me) the explanations had fallen flat on their face, and it was difficult to see what it was on about. Now I know, it's all obvious, but what was needed was a carefully stepped through example or two. If the dear reader can't see the big steps, let's give them small steps.

Jacob had given an 'example' in response to my early query, but it just felt like repetion of what had already been said, but it didn't take the next [small] step, which this example does (partly because it can as it can use the Loeliger diagram, which wasn't available in Jacob's example).

I also deliberately added the B^@ and B^! (standalone) example as the C^@ and C^! didn't have an 'all parents' (plurals!), but it did have the indentation issue - see above about stretching out the headers, which would give more space for the indentations.

Show 9 quoted lines

> Here it's distracting.  I think it's clearer for the reader to remove 
> these expansions and just use the node names from the illustration.
>
>> +          = F             I J F
>> +   B^@    = B^1 B^2 B^3
>> +          = D E F         D G H E F I J
>> +   C^!    = C ^C^1
>
> I think this expansion might be better expressed as "C ^C^@".

I hadn't viewed it that way. It would be an extra step.

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>        It'll be the same for "B^! = B ^B^@" as well, which demonstrates a 
> nice consistency and also helps to emphasize the meaning of the ^@ 
> notation.
>
>> +          = C ^F          C
>> +   B^! = B ^B^1 ^B^2 ^B^3
>> +       = B ^D ^E ^F       B
>
> The layout of these last two lines doesn't match the others.  They should 
> be:
>
>    B^!    = B ^B^1 ^B^2   ^B^3
>           = B ^D ^E ^F    B
>
> I see that the next patch fixes the layout of the unchanged examples, but 
> it leaves these two unaligned.

As noted it was about squeezing that one in. I'll look at alternate heading titles and spacing options.

-- Philip