Re: [PATCH v3] range-diff: update stale summary of --no-dual-color

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 27, 2018, 17:57 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq5zzvlmjy.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <20180823221152.GD99542@aiede.svl.corp.google.com>

Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:
>>> Kyle Meyer wrote:
>
>>>> Subject: [PATCH v3] range-diff: update stale summary of --no-dual-color
> [...]
>>> Reviewed-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
>>
>> Sorry, too late.  I'll revert the merge of the previous round out of
>> 'next' and requeue this one, but that will have to wait until the
>> next integration cycle.
>
> Thanks for the heads up.  Sounds like a fine plan.

Having said that, I do not think the change from v2 to v3 is an improvement. At least the one in v2 explained what the input is to the logic to determine colors, helping the users to understand what is painted and why and decide if that coloring is useful to them.

The phrasing in v3, "use simple diff colors", does not give much information over saying something like "paint it differently" (which is silly because "differently" is a given, once you give an option to cause a non-default behaviour).

Not limited to this particular case, but in general, subjective words like "simple" have much less information density than more specific words, and we need to be careful when spending bits on a limited space (like option description) to them.