A few more ideas

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Robert Webb
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A few more ideas

Post by Robert Webb » Fri Sep 12, 2008 8:24 am

A few more ideas:

- Show the file modification date beside the file name at the top of each file. Often when diffing I have to return to Explorer to see just how old the files are.

- I suggest some nicer colours. All diffs are shown with red text on a red background. Instead, do what most other GUI diff programs do and use different colours for these: (1) changed text, (2) text only in left file, (3) text only in right file (also in the file map at the side).

- When text has been deleted within a line, the file with the extra text will show it highlighted, but the file without the text shows nothing. I suggest showing a coloured marker at the point where the text was deleted.

- In the Explorer menu, maybe always show the top MRU file one or two levels higher in the menu, since it is almost always the most recent file I will want to diff with. First I select "Add file to list", then I'm always going to want to diff against that file.

Thanks,
Rob.

jeffhostetler
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Re: A few more ideas

Post by jeffhostetler » Fri Sep 12, 2008 11:43 am

Thanks for the suggestions. I've added feature requests for them all.


As for the colors comment, you can change them in the Options Dialog.
We've gone around and around on the default color scheme -- trying to
balance the opinions of the color-sophisticated and the color-challenged
folks in-house. I'm not sure there exists a perfect scheme.
BTW In http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=8633
I have a registry script that changes the current color settings to kinda
match the look of the first version of DiffMerge. [Exit DiffMerge before
you run the script.] You might take a look at that for inspiration.

thanks again,
jeff


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Robert Webb
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:37 pm
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Contact:

Re: A few more ideas

Post by Robert Webb » Fri Sep 12, 2008 10:03 pm

Maybe I'm missing something, but the Options dialog does not allow for separate colours for left-only, right-only and changed lines. This is what I was requesting. It provides a few colours for 3-way merge, but for 2-file diff it currently appears to only have one colour setting, shared by all changed lines (left-only, right-only and altered). I suggest different colours for these three cases.

Thanks,
Rob.

jeffhostetler
Posts: 534
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2007 11:37 am
Location: SourceGear
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Re: A few more ideas

Post by jeffhostetler » Tue Sep 16, 2008 11:35 am

You're right. Both sides get the same coloring. I'll add a feature request for that.

thanks
jeff

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