news <news@sea.gmane.org> wrote on 01/25/2005 08:23:30 AM:
> Mark Phippard wrote:
> > In the text for "To:" you are missing the word "and" between URL and
> > revision.
>
> And "points to the repository at the URL:" I think would be better
> without _the_.
I agree.
>
> > I will respect your wish to not discuss remembering previous merges,
> > but I do not completely agree that this is what Subversion means by
> > merge tracking and that everything must wait until they implement it.
>
> The danger in doing a poor-man's merge tracking is that people will
> think it is the real thing. We could implement a scheme that simply
> saves the last revision I merged, but if someone else does a merge as
> well, I have no record of that, and could be misled into thinking that
> TSVN has checked on the server.
I guess the way I see it is that the user still needs to do what you are
doing, this was just an idea to do a better job in initializing the values
when the dialog is first displayed. For someone like myself that does all
of the merging, it would be very helpful.
> The new dialog overcomes much of the earlier To/From confusion. The
> other issue is the use of (N-1) for revision ranges, which novice users
> (like me) find non-intuitive. One method which might help is to add
> _another_ button close to the 'Use "From:" URL' checkbox which is only
> enabled when that box is checked, whose function is to allow selection
> of the revision range exactly as Stefan did in the previous attempt. If
> I click on this button and select revs 2457 - 2468 and click OK, "From:"
> is set to 2456 and "To:" is set to 2468. I am not sure what title to
> give this button. Maybe 'Select revision range'. Or maybe 'OneClick -
> tortoisesvn.tigris.org and you're done'. But I admit it could be
> confusing having this as well as the two 'show log' buttons.
On the N-1 issue, how long are people really going to be confused about
this? I mean, certainly you are not still confused about it. Sure the
first couple times you might be a bit confused, but then hopefully most
people will get it. There is nothing illogical about what Subversion is
doing, it is just a generally confusing operation no matter what you do. I
think we are asking for trouble if the UI is hiding that detail. There
are 2 good Subversion books out already, with more coming, and they are
all going to address this issue. I think we would only add to the
confusion if we add something new to the equation.
You cannot merge Word documents, you cannot merge graphics, and good luck
merging Web pages designed with DreamWeaver of FrontPage. The audience
for Merge has to predominantly be programmers. Certainly we ought to be
smart enough to figure out how this works after one or two times. And if
the user had started by reading a book, there is a good chance they will
not be confused at all.
> Other ideas:
> Is there any merit in being able to view the diff file as an alternative
> method of previewing? The close link between diff and merge is
> highlighted in the SVN book, but we do not provide any facility for tree
> diff. Perhaps this is a good place to put it.
>
> Someone else commented that 'dry run' would be better as a button than a
> checkbox, so maybe we could have 5 buttons at the bottom:
>
> [ Unified Diff ] [ Dry Run ] [ Merge ] [ Cancel ] [ Help ]
>
> Only Merge and Cancel would close the dialog.
>
I like these ideas on the buttons.
Mark
_____________________________________________________________________________
Scanned for SoftLanding Systems, Inc. by IBM Email Security Management Services powered by MessageLabs.
_____________________________________________________________________________
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@tortoisesvn.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@tortoisesvn.tigris.org
Received on Tue Jan 25 15:11:59 2005