[RFC] git-gui window layout

[RFC] git-gui window layout

[Adam Piatyszek]

Dear Giters,

I would like you to comment on my idea to change, or at least add a
possibility to change, the current layout of git-gui window.

Nowadays there is a tendency to produce wide screens for laptops and
even standalone LCD monitors. One can safely assume that the minimum
reasonable horizontal resolution of a screen is at least 1024 pixels (I
do not expect anyone using git-gui with 800x600 resolution).
Moreover, most popular window managers decreases the vertical dimension
of a desktop by using horizontally-oriented panels (e.g. KDE, Gnome,
XFCE4, etc.)

The current layout of git-gui window covering the whole desktop area on
a typical WXGA (1280x800) laptop LCD display is thus:

+----------+-----------------------------------+
|          |                                   |
|  staged  |          unstaged                 |
|          |                                   |
+----------+----------------+------------------+
|###     commit log         |      EMPTY       |
|###                        |                  |
+---------------------------+------------------+
|                                              |
|    diff output                               |
|                                              |
+----------------------------------------------+

In my opinion, the staged, unstaged and diff areas are usually used for
displaying things that are taller than wider (e.g. a list of files,
patches of well structured code, which is usually < 80 columns). The
commit log window is also designed for text narrower than < 80 cols.

Therefore in my opinion it might be more useful to restructure this
layout to something like this:

+-------------+----------------------------+---+
|             |                            |###|
|             |       commit log           |###|
|   staged    +----------------------------+---+
|             |                                |
|             |                                |
+----- 1 -----+                                |
|             |       diff output              |
|             2                                |
|  unstaged   |                                |
|             |                                |
|             |                                |
+-------------+--------------------------------+

Buttons (rescan, push, commit, etc.) are denoted here as ###. Besides
the walls denoted as 1 and 2 should be movable so one could adjust the
size of staged/unstaged and diff areas.
The minimum width of diff window would be limited by the commit log
window width (I propose 80 colums) plus the size of the buttons.

Unfortunately, I do not nothing about TCL/TK programming, so I even did
not tried to analyse the code of git-gui. Therefore I am not sure if
such a restructure is easy to implement.

Anyway I hope for your comments to this idea.

BR,
/Adam


-- 
.:.  Adam Piatyszek - "ediap"       .:.  JID: ediap(at)jabber.org .:.
.:.  ediap(at)users.sourceforge.net .:.  PGP key ID: 0x1F115CCB   .:.

Re: [RFC] git-gui window layout

[Johannes Sixt]

Adam Piatyszek schrieb:
> Dear Giters,
> 
> I would like you to comment on my idea to change, or at least add a
> possibility to change, the current layout of git-gui window.
> [...]
> 
> +-------------+----------------------------+---+
> |             |                            |###|
> |             |       commit log           |###|
> |   staged    +----------------------------+---+
> |             |                                |
> |             |                                |
> +----- 1 -----+                                |
> |             |       diff output              |
> |             2                                |
> |  unstaged   |                                |
> |             |                                |
> |             |                                |
> +-------------+--------------------------------+

May I point you to
http://repo.or.cz/w/git-gui.git?a=commitdiff;h=a0592d3f5746b41c60fee71dd8d2d27b5c813907
which was committed 5 hours ago.

Except that it has Unstaged above Staged and Diff above Commit, which IMHO 
is much more natural.

-- Hannes

Re: [RFC] git-gui window layout

[Adam Piatyszek]

* Johannes Sixt [2007-10-12 12:00]:
> Adam Piatyszek schrieb:
>> I would like you to comment on my idea to change, or at least add a
>> possibility to change, the current layout of git-gui window.
>> [...]
>>
>> +-------------+----------------------------+---+
>> |             |                            |###|
>> |             |       commit log           |###|
>> |   staged    +----------------------------+---+
>> |             |                                |
>> |             |                                |
>> +----- 1 -----+                                |
>> |             |       diff output              |
>> |             2                                |
>> |  unstaged   |                                |
>> |             |                                |
>> |             |                                |
>> +-------------+--------------------------------+
> 
> May I point you to
> http://repo.or.cz/w/git-gui.git?a=commitdiff;h=a0592d3f5746b41c60fee71dd8d2d27b5c813907
> 
> which was committed 5 hours ago.
> 
> Except that it has Unstaged above Staged and Diff above Commit, which
> IMHO is much more natural.

Thanks for the info! It seems that I was a bit late with my proposal. ;-)

/Adam


-- 
.:.  Adam Piatyszek - "ediap"       .:.  JID: ediap(at)jabber.org .:.
.:.  ediap(at)users.sourceforge.net .:.  PGP key ID: 0x1F115CCB   .:.