Re: feature request

[Kai Willadsen <kai willadsen gmail com>]

On 17 August 2013 09:01, david kerns <david t kerns gmail com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 2:57 PM, Kai Willadsen <kai willadsen gmail com>
> wrote:
> > This is actually a really old request
> > (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=416387) that is sadly
> > difficult to figure out. Actually implementing it would be fairly
> > trivial. Keeping anything else remotely sane while doing so seems
> > impossible.
> >
> > The problem is that selection handling across multiple trees is
> > complicated. At the moment, we Do The Right Thing by just enforcing
> > that there is only one active selection between all the current trees.
> > If we allowed each tree to have its own active selection, then every
> > compare operation becomes ambiguous. How do we know whether you
> > *meant* to compare X in tree one with Y in tree two, or whether you
> > just left the cursor there? etc.  It's also quite visually distracting
> > having multiple selections, but that's a different story.
> >
> > So I'm afraid that I don't know of any better way to do this than what
> > we currently enable: open up the files and then use the file browser
> > to select the file you really wanted to diff.
> >
> > ...but I'm interested in any possible solutions to the problem.
> >
> > cheers,
> > Kai
>
> Fighting gmail's default of top posting
> so, here's a solution that might be more work then the perceived benefit,
> but I'll throw it your way just in case ;)
>
> (I was just playing with 1.7.4)
>
> I'm doing a "meld dir1 dir2" as described in my OP. I'm looking at the two
> directory structures.
> I click "New Comparison" and get a new "blank tab", then I click back on the
> first tab,
> now imagine I can drag/drop any 2 or 3 files from the directory list onto
> the blank tab, and poof, "meld magic"!

That actually all sounds fairly sensible. Basically this just involves
making tabs (specifically new comparison tabs) drop targets and
letting our trees be drag sources... which all makes sense.

There are some caveats. I don't know whether it's possible/sane to be
dragging from multiple trees at once, and even if we wanted to that
would mean allowing multiple selections... so you'd probably have to
drag your files to the tab one at a time. This brings up the second
problem, which is that we can't auto-start two-way comparisons this
way, because we have no signal that the comparison is actually ready
(and isn't just two files into a three-way comparison). So you'd still
need to switch to the new tab and click Compare.

Anyway, I do think that these seem like sensible enhancements anyway.
If you could open a new bug for this, that would be awesome.

cheers,
Kai


On 17 August 2013 09:01, david kerns <david t kerns gmail com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 2:57 PM, Kai Willadsen <kai willadsen gmail com>
> wrote:
> > On 16 August 2013 03:42, david kerns <david t kerns gmail com> wrote:
> > > Hi new to the mail list so sorry if this is a duplicate request... (I
> > > did a
> > > quick search through the archive but certainly not exhaustive)
> > >
> > > many times I do directory compares...
> > >
> > > meld dir1 dir2
> > >
> > > some times I have this:
> > >
> > > dir1/sub/x.cc
> > > dir1/sub/x.cc.orig
> > > ...
> > >
> > > dir2/sub/x.cc
> > > ...
> > >
> > > it would be really slick to be able to select the specific files to
> > > "diff"
> > > (in a tab of the current directory diff)
> > > ie either:
> > >    dir1/sub/x.cc vs dir1/sub/x.cc.orig
> > > or
> > >   dir1/sub/x.cc.orig vs dir2/sub/x.cc
> > >
> > > and not just the matching relative path file names
> > >
> > > the UI to select the files to diff is what will make/break this feature
> > > (without cluttering up the default behavior)
> > >
> > > anyway, thanks for continued work on this wonderful tool!
> >
> > Thanks for the feedback!
> >
> > This is actually a really old request
> > (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=416387) that is sadly
> > difficult to figure out. Actually implementing it would be fairly
> > trivial. Keeping anything else remotely sane while doing so seems
> > impossible.
> >
> > The problem is that selection handling across multiple trees is
> > complicated. At the moment, we Do The Right Thing by just enforcing
> > that there is only one active selection between all the current trees.
> > If we allowed each tree to have its own active selection, then every
> > compare operation becomes ambiguous. How do we know whether you
> > *meant* to compare X in tree one with Y in tree two, or whether you
> > just left the cursor there? etc.  It's also quite visually distracting
> > having multiple selections, but that's a different story.
> >
> > So I'm afraid that I don't know of any better way to do this than what
> > we currently enable: open up the files and then use the file browser
> > to select the file you really wanted to diff.
> >
> > ...but I'm interested in any possible solutions to the problem.
> >
> > cheers,
> > Kai
>
> Fighting gmail's default of top posting
> so, here's a solution that might be more work then the perceived benefit,
> but I'll throw it your way just in case ;)
>
> (I was just playing with 1.7.4)
>
> I'm doing a "meld dir1 dir2" as described in my OP. I'm looking at the two
> directory structures.
> I click "New Comparison" and get a new "blank tab", then I click back on the
> first tab,
> now imagine I can drag/drop any 2 or 3 files from the directory list onto
> the blank tab, and poof, "meld magic"!
>
> Dave