Re: [PATCH v6 3/3] vimdiff: add tool documentation

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 28, 2022, 05:43 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqbkxq639i.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <2d1b3c6d-4345-8b7d-b8b8-4baf1edd91f0@gmail.com>

Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@gmail.com> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> On 27/03/22 18.23, Fernando Ramos wrote:
>> +When using these variants, in order to specify a custom layout you will have to
>> +set configuration variables `mergetool.gvimdiff.layout` and
>> +`mergetool.nvimdiff.layout` instead of `mergetool.vimdiff.layout`
>> +
>
> What about this wording?
>
> "These variants also have corresponding layout configuration named
>  `mergetool.gvimdiff.layout` and `mergetool.nvimdiff.layout`, respectively."

Hmph. The wording aside, is it a good design that you have to set gvimdiff.layout if you use gvim and your setting to vimdiff.layout has no effect when you are using nvim or gvim?

What is the reason why a user may want to specify them separately?

 * I want to use this layout when using plain vim but gvim is so
   different that I want to use a different one from usability's
   point of view.

 * The layout I want to use with plain vim, when fed to gvim or
   nvim, would totally make them misbehave.  I cannot reuse the same
   layout even if I wanted to.

 * Depending on the kind of conflict I deal with, I want to use
   different layouts, but there is no easy mechanism to choose
   between multiple values I give to mergetool.vimdiff.layout, so I
   use one layout for vimdiff and another for gvimdiff, and
   depending on the layout I want to use, I switch between vimdiff
   and gvimdiff.

 * Something else?

If on the other hand, a user may want to stick to a single layout no matter which variant of vim is used, it may make more sense to just use a single mergetool.vimdiff.layout across all the different variants of vim implementations, and possibly, have their own one override the most generic "vimdiff" one. E.g. gvimdiff would use mergetool.gvimdiff.layout if exists, or mergetool.vimdiff.layout otherwise.

I dunno.