Re: What's cooking in git.git (Jun 2017, #03; Mon, 5)

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 14, 2017, 09:54 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqo9tq51yq.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAGZ79kZU-QGYAiv+9tK9UoujuLVD8Ejar=zaHVm8YR2p4cbgOQ@mail.gmail.com>

Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> The color experts agreed that (3) might be the best solution
> as this gives most flexibility:
>
>     "I would be happy as I can configure the bounds highlighting
>     to not exist, it would degenerate to a pure Zebra, which is
>     very simple to understand. Junio seemed to like (2) a lot, so
>     he would configure both dim colors to be 'context', but configure
>     the highlight colors to be attention drawing. So everybody would
>     be happy. It is also not too many colors, we are good at for loops."

Another thing I found a bit confusing in the description of choices in the documentation was that description for some began with "Based on X.", and as a plain reader, I couldn't tell if that is saying "the implementation happens to be similar or shares code with X" (which is not all that interesting to the end user) or "the meaning this mode tries to convey is the same as X but the presentation is a bit different" (in which case the end user is hinted that it is benefitial to understand what informacion the mode X shows and how).

For example, I view what I prefer (i.e. (2)) as a variant of Zebra (i.e. (1)). Conceptually, you paint the diff output using water soluble paint into a Zebra pattern, then apply thin strips of protective tape to places where two Zebra colors are adjacent to each other (i.e. do not cover the boundary between a block of a Zebra colored moved lines and a block of context lines), dunk the whole thing in water and then remove the strips of tape. Regions covered by the strips of tape will retain the Zebra colors, while the remainder of the Zebra colored part are colored in a much subdued way. Understanding how Zebra mode marks the moved lines would help understanding its output, but your implementation may not share much code with the actual implementation of Zebra-painting.

Thanks.