From: Santi Béjar <santi@agolina.net>
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:10:34 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH take 3 0/4] color-words improvements
Message-ID: <adf1fd3d0901151610p41930ee2gfc7259aee7e15d73@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0901151940170.3586@pacific.mpi-cbg.de>

2009/1/15 Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>:
> On Thu, 15 Jan 2009, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> I didn't see the semantics of color-words documented in the original
>> either,
>

[...]

>> E.g. when these two are compared:
>>
>>   bbb aaa bb aa b
>>   ccc aaa cc
>>
>> what should happen?  We would want to say "aa" was removed by showing it
>> in red, but on what background should it be displayed?  cc <red>aa</red>
>> b?
>
> If we are only ever interested in the 'a's, I'd say that the output should
> only reflect that.  In other words, what the current code does (ccc
> aaa<red>aa</red> cc) is okay IMHO.  After all, we said we're interested in
> the 'a's, so we should not complain that it did not show us the removal of
> 'b's.

It may be ok and logical, but for me it is not what I want. Mmaybe I
don't really undestand what I want or is a crazy idea but here it is
anyway:

Take a simple case with this two lines :

matrix[a,b,c]
matrix{d,b,c}

there is no space so the standard color-words does not help to
visualize that matrix, the b and c are not changed.

What I currently do is to add some spaces:

matrix[ a, b, c ]
matrix{ d, b, c }

then the color-words at least says that "b, c" is unchanged.

What I would like is that --color-words would act as adding this
spaces automatically (and even one after "matrix").

Or another way to think it could be:

a) primary words are those with alphanumerics (or a regex)
b) secondary "words" are the other non-whitespaces characters (in this
case "[]{} and ,"
c) whitespaces are cruft.

(having two regexp to specify what is a words but they cannot mix).

If everything works as I think (it's late night :-) with the above two lines:

matrix[a,b,c]
matrix{d,b,c}

the word diff would be

matrix<RED>[<GREEN>{<RED>a<GREEN>d<RESET>,b,c<RED>]<GREEN>}<RED>

Santi