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Re: TurtoisMerge - Suggestions for Color Use

From: Stefan Küng <tortoisesvn_at_gmail.com>
Date: 2007-09-10 12:59:15 CEST

On 9/9/07, Vidar Hasfjord <hasfjord@btinternet.com> wrote:
> Stefan Küng wrote:
>
> >Which ones can't you configure? I can't find any color that's not
> configurable, but maybe it's just me that can't find it. I use
>
> See my screenshots in my reply to Ivan. Unless I'm totally confused there
> are some colours that wont change whatever I do (build 9706).

those colors are automatically calculated from the "conflicted" color
(the color intensity is reduced a little bit). So if you change the
conflicted color to e.g. blue, those colors will also change to a
shade of blue.

> > We already use the same colours. Of course, 'conflicted' state colors
> only are shown in the bottom pane because those are not possible in two
> pane view.
>
> Ah, I've focussed solely on three-pane here. See my screenshot. Still a
> problem?

Depends on your definition of "problem" :)

> > Depending on the monitor one uses we discovered that you can only use a
> very limited amount of pale colors so they're still 'different' for the
> user. That's why some default colors are not as pale as you might want to.
>
> Makes sense; and no problem if all colors are configurable. The user can
> then fine-tune.

If you *really* want to fine tune every possible color, have a look here:
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/svn/tortoisesvn/trunk/src/TortoiseMerge/DiffData.cpp
(login username "guest", leave password empty)
Check out all the m_regForegroundColors and m_regBackgroundColors
initializations: you could manually set up each of those registry
entries if you like.
But in the colors dialog, we must reduce the amount of configurable colors.

> > Many people don't like the strikeout and have it disabled in the settings.
>
> I found that setting later on; again no problem if everything is
> configurable. Personally I would prefer a default based on strike-out and
> less colours.

The problem with that is that as soon as the user disables the
strikeout font, the colors don't change automatically and therefore he
won't be able to distinguish between added and removed lines anymore.
And you can be *sure* that we would receive a lot of mails with
subject "[BUG]!!!"
(you can choose any number of exclamation marks from three up to 50).

> > Since a conflict is serious, having that colour too pale might lead the
> user to miss the conflict - it would be too close to the red colour of
> deleted lines.
>
> Not an issue in my proposal since the default colours for deleted and added
> lines are the same; green if non-conflicted. Conflicts are red. This
> reflects the colours used for the navigation buttons on the toolbar.

I don't like the idea of having just one color for added and deleted
lines. But you can configure TortoiseMerge like that if you like.

> > I've now added a new line state and colour (light green) for 'conflict
> resolved' lines.
>
> Great! That's probably the most valuable part of my proposal. My proposal
> uses the colour yellow for this though.

Yellow is already used for added lines :)

> > If the lines are identical, the background is white anyway. If the lines
> are *not* identical, then an empty line means that something got removed.
> And that IMHO *is* significant for conflict resolution?
>
> Sorry, I was not clear; I was referring to the lines and colour called
> "empty" in the settings, i.e. alignment lines not part of the source.

Ah, now I understand. So you mean to use a color closer to the default
window background for those empty lines since they're not that much
different.
Easy to do, and also configurable.

From your screenshots I assume that you're using an 1.4.x version from
the release branch, not a nightly build from trunk.
Maybe you could install a nightly build from trunk and see if some of
the color issues you reported are still there? Especially the one with
the selected lines and unreadable colors then should be fixed.

Stefan

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Received on Mon Sep 10 12:56:03 2007

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