threads / discuss / 2741

gitk - ewww

Subject: gitk - ewww

## tl;dr

7 messages between Dec 4, 2005 and Dec 6, 2005.

replies: 6people: 6as markdown or json

Ben Clifford· Dec 4, 2005, 01:27 UTC · lore

Here's a screen shot that surprised me with a really high 'ewwww' factor when I fired up gitk this morning on my local git repo, given that it looks pretty the rest of the time.

This repo tracking git master with just one extra commit that I've added and rebase off origin repeatedly.

The area around where the 'master' green tag is displayed (specifically the two lines below it) are surprisingly poor.

I'm not going to learn tcl/tk and how gitk works to investigate, though, but maybe someone else cares enough and/or can see a trivial fix...

Screen shot is at: http://www/hawaga.org.uk/ben/tech/gitk-eww-1.png

If trying to recreate, e011472b550b27a4644403c6fa99543ee9004a63 is only on my local machine, but I can supply a copy of my tree too.

$ cg status
Heads:
    >master      e011472b550b27a4644403c6fa99543ee9004a63
   R origin      56b5e946f2ba4fd57bbe14f9e3ec2e0ae314d5e6

-- 
Ben • ベン • Бэн • 벤 • 班明
http://www.hawaga.org.uk/ben/
My email is high latency but best way to contact me. Alternatively,  
SMS number(s) at above URL.

Linus Torvalds· Dec 4, 2005, 04:44 UTC · re: Ben Clifford · lore

Re: gitk - ewww

On Sun, 4 Dec 2005, Ben Clifford wrote:

> 
> Screen shot is at:
> http://www/hawaga.org.uk/ben/tech/gitk-eww-1.png

Yes. gitk doesn't look wonderful with octopus merges, the lines start crossing. Oh well. I think you have to live with it, it's done this for a long time.

What makes _me_ go "eww" in that screenshot is that tcl/tk doesn't do anti-aliased fonts, but maybe that's just me, and that's apparently 8.5 has that fixed (at a horrible performance impact, I'm sure, but hey, one look at your screenshot and I'm saying "bring it on").

		Linus

H. Peter Anvin· Dec 4, 2005, 06:05 UTC · re: Linus Torvalds · lore

Re: gitk - ewww

Linus Torvalds wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> 
> On Sun, 4 Dec 2005, Ben Clifford wrote:
> 
>>Screen shot is at:
>>http://www/hawaga.org.uk/ben/tech/gitk-eww-1.png
> 
> 
> Yes. gitk doesn't look wonderful with octopus merges, the lines start 
> crossing. Oh well. I think you have to live with it, it's done this for a 
> long time.
> 
> What makes _me_ go "eww" in that screenshot is that tcl/tk doesn't do 
> anti-aliased fonts, but maybe that's just me, and that's apparently 8.5 
> has that fixed (at a horrible performance impact, I'm sure, but hey, one 
> look at your screenshot and I'm saying "bring it on").
>

It usually work OK for me, running on Fedora Core 4.

Clearly, though, it's Tcl/Tk version dependent; especially since it looks absolutely *awful* on Cygwin.

	-hpa

Ben Clifford· Dec 4, 2005, 09:38 UTC · re: H. Peter Anvin · lore

Re: gitk - ewww

Show 11 quoted lines

>> What makes _me_ go "eww" in that screenshot is that tcl/tk doesn't  
>> do anti-aliased fonts, but maybe that's just me, and that's  
>> apparently 8.5 has that fixed (at a horrible performance impact,  
>> I'm sure, but hey, one look at your screenshot and I'm saying  
>> "bring it on").
>>
>
> It usually work OK for me, running on Fedora Core 4.
>
> Clearly, though, it's Tcl/Tk version dependent; especially since it  
> looks absolutely *awful* on Cygwin.

The Wish/About Tcl & Tk menu option reports tcl/tk 8.4.7 - so I'd guess any changes made for 8.5 won't have arrived at this host yet.

This is under Mac OS X 10.4.2.

-- 
Ben • ベン • Бэн • 벤 • 班明
http://www.hawaga.org.uk/ben/
My email is high latency but best way to contact me. Alternatively,  
SMS number(s) at above URL.

Junio C Hamano· Dec 4, 2005, 06:23 UTC · re: Linus Torvalds · lore

Re: gitk - ewww

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> On Sun, 4 Dec 2005, Ben Clifford wrote:
>> 
>> Screen shot is at:
>> http://www/hawaga.org.uk/ben/tech/gitk-eww-1.png
>
> Yes. gitk doesn't look wonderful with octopus merges, the lines start 
> crossing. Oh well. I think you have to live with it, it's done this for a 
> long time.

FWIW, when the first ever Octopus was made, it looked wonderful. The way gitk renders octopus is somehow quite different these days.

Nikolai Weibull· Dec 4, 2005, 17:12 UTC · re: Linus Torvalds · lore

Re: gitk - ewww

Linus Torvalds wrote:

> On Sun, 4 Dec 2005, Ben Clifford wrote:

> > Screen shot is at:
> > http://www/hawaga.org.uk/ben/tech/gitk-eww-1.png

> What makes _me_ go "eww" in that screenshot is that tcl/tk doesn't do
> anti-aliased fonts, but maybe that's just me, and that's apparently
> 8.5 has that fixed (at a horrible performance impact, I'm sure, but
> hey, one look at your screenshot and I'm saying "bring it on").

Just use a slightly larger font and it should be fine. The lower-right field, whatever that lists (changed files?) - I have never used gitk, uses anti-aliasing, and the only problem I see is that the commit-message listing uses a font that is way too small (or is badly designed). The top pane is easily readable, although it could use a slightly larger point-size.

Anti-aliasing is only a hack for displaying text on a screen. It's not a substitute for choosing your fonts and point sizes with care. A bitmapped font designed for small point-sizes will always look more crisp than a generic TTF at small point-sizes.

        nikolai

-- 
Nikolai Weibull: now available free of charge at http://bitwi.se/!
Born in Chicago, IL USA; currently residing in Gothenburg, Sweden.
main(){printf(&linux["\021%six\012\0"],(linux)["have"]+"fun"-97);}

Paul Mackerras· Dec 6, 2005, 22:54 UTC · re: Ben Clifford · lore

Re: gitk - ewww

Ben Clifford writes:

> The area around where the 'master' green tag is displayed  
> (specifically the two lines below it) are surprisingly poor.

Yes.

> I'm not going to learn tcl/tk and how gitk works to investigate,  
> though, but maybe someone else cares enough and/or can see a trivial  
> fix...

I'm working on changes which should fix this and also speed it up, but it's not trivial... :)

Paul.