Re: Single-line paragraphs in TortoiseMerge

Markus Kuhn wrote:
> FEATURE PROPOSAL
>
> I would like to propose two minor extensions to TortoiseMerge 1.4.3
> aimed at making it more convenient to deal with single-line paragraphs,
> i.e. text files in which line-feed is only used to terminate entire
> paragraphs, which is common practice in HTML files. TortoiseMerge (like
> diff) works brilliantly on source code, where there are rarely more than
> 80 characters between two line-feeds, but it is still less than ideal
> for working with unwrapped text files were there can be hundreds of
> words between two line-feeds.
>
> I hope that two fairly minor extensions could change that:
>
>
> FEATURE 1: Word wrap long lines in displayed diffs
>
> Add under either "View" or "View|Settings" in TortoiseMerge an option called
>
> "Word wrap long lines"
>
> that does the same what the "View|Options|Text|Word Wrap|Wrap to Window"
> setting does in WordPad: A displayed line that is longer than the window
> width is wrapped onto subsequent lines at word boundaries, such that
> there is usually no need to horizontally scroll the text window (unless
> there is a super-long word).
>
> Reason: Without automatic word wrapping, diffs of files with single-line
> paragraphs (which is what e.g. most HTML GUI editors output) are *very*
> difficult and tedious to read.

That definitely wouldn't be a 'minor extension' as you call it. It would
mean rewriting a big piece of TortoiseMerge, because it is completely
line-based.

> FEATURE 2: Mark only in-line changes in displayed diffs
>
> Add under either "View" or "View|Settings" in TortoiseMerge an option
> called
>
> "Mark only in-line changes"
>
> which -- when selected -- causes the coloring and strikeout of entire
> added and removed lines (often paragraphs) to disappear when an inline
> change has already been marked in that line (paragraph).
>
> Reason: Diffs of files with single-line paragraphs (which is what e.g.
> most HTML GUI editors output) currently mark an entire paragraph, even
> if I have just inserted a single comma somewhere. The diff display of
> such files would be much more readable if there were an easy option to
> restrict the colour marking only to the inline changes, and not apply it
> always to entire lines (paragraphs).

I don't quite see the problem here. If TortoiseMerge shows inline diffs,
then the whole line is also shown in a lighter color, not much different
than the normal text lines.

The big problem here is that TortoiseMerge has to decide itself whether
to show inline diffs or not, and that's a complicated task. You don't
want to see inline diffs for almost every char, because that would make
it much worse than without inline diffs.

Stefan

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