[Subclipse-users] The "commit" dialog window lacks valuable information

Hello,

I've had the following exchange of messages with Mark Phippard on his blog (see article http://markphip.blogspot.com/2007/09/new-subclipse-build-posted-dialog.html):

> I came across this blog looking for a way to restore the column that showed
> the file status, i.e. "missing", "deleted", "added", "unknown", "changed"
> etc. Can you please re-add this very helpul column? Since no decorators are
> used (apart from the one indicating property changes), there's NO WAY to
> know exactly to what changes do I agree upon pressing the OK button.

Mark Phippard said...
> There is no plan to change the dialog as that would require going back to
> table, which we do not intend to do. It is not true that there are no
> decorators. The same ones used in the Synchronize view are used. An
> outgoing arrow for modifications. The arrow has a + in it if the file is
> added, a minus if deleted, and there is no arrow at all if the file is
> currently unversioned.
>
> We are basically emulating the UI of the CVS plugin which our users have
> told us for years they want us to do.

Mark also pointed me to this list, so here I am with my reply.

First of all, Mark, SVN is the "CVS killer" as it marketed itself not long ago. Using the excuse of user habits does not hold for a software intended to IMPROVE, rather than COPY. The only real drawback of the commit dialog was that it didn't render the project's folder structure. Other than that it was just fine. Anyone reading the comments to the aforementioned article can clearly see that the majority of users disapproved the recent changes. Really.

Secondly, if you read the javadoc for org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Tree, TreItem and TreeColumn, I'm confident you'll notice that adding a column to a tree is a piece of cake. So no going back to a table is necessary.

Lastly, I'm attaching two images of the commit dialog I get in Subclipse 1.4.4. One with and one without the "Show unversioned files" set.
Can you tell me what's going on in the "libs" directory? It is true that I removed and introduced new files without informing SVN, but that was no problem before. I used to know which files were "missing" which were "unversioned", which were etc. As you can see no decoration is present apart from arrow, which I understood it was initially meant for property changes. But anyway, tiny decorations within small icons are harder to read in high volumes than a separate column of keywords - make a poll on programmers.

And, since I am here, can I make an improvement suggestion? SVN is known for the ability to treat atomically changes in or of several files. That said, most SVN savvy users will carefully choose their committed set of changes so as not to mix changes made for different logical modifications to the project.
I for one, always examine the list (I didn't miss a tree because files could be sorted by path) of changes before pressing "OK". Now, I must manually expand the whole tree...
Would you consider an "Expand all" button appropiate here?

Cheers.

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