changes in meld 1.8 +

[andré <andr55 laposte net>]

Recently I upgraded my distro.
It now ships with meld 1.8.2, and I just tried using the new meld.
Unfortunately, numerous regressions.
(Note that I also tried versions 1.8.5 and 3.11.1 from the download 
page, which show the same regressions.)

1) The most important, the ability to hide lines in directory mode is 
lost.  This was an invaluable feature.  It allowed much more reliable 
working through numerous changes to large sets of files, particularly
for porting some changes across versions which will remain different.

Please note that the meld users manual » folder comparison » filtering, 
under "explicit hiding" and "case sensitivity" says that toolbar buttons 
are available for this purpose.
So maybe this was an accidental oversight ?

2) The layout of the comparison page seems somewhat strange :
2a) The title of the tab is uselessly repeated.
2b) The large oversized icons take up a lot of screen space.  Small 
icons would be as useful, if any are wanted.
2c) The entry of file/directory paths + names is limited to about 20 
characters, grossly insufficient for many comparisons.  (Almost all in 
my usages.)  The older layout of file name fields one above the other 
was much more useful.
2d) Entering a second file/directory name does not take advantage of the 
previous name entered.  Also, an entered name can not be copied to 
another name field, very useful for paths that are very similar.

3) The changes are not localized.  Hopefully that will come soon.

However there are some pluses, such as showing size + modification date, 
and allowing comparing only by name/size/date instead of each character. 
 Both very useful.

It is just that not being able to hide lines (the first point) is a huge 
disadvantage in analyzing 2 directory trees containing many hundreds of 
files.

A show-all button would be useful as well, making it easier to clean up 
file sets with backup files, etc

If you would like me to file bug(s) for any of these, please let me 
know.  (I'm now subscribed to the list.)

Regards
--
André