Re: gitk highlight feature

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>]

On Wed, 3 May 2006, Paul Mackerras wrote:
>
> I just pushed out some changes to gitk which allow you to use one view
> to highlight another (see the "Highlight" submenu under the "View"
> menu), and which allow you to specify arbitrary git-rev-list arguments
> for a view.  The arguments string uses shell quoting conventions.

Ok. It looks interesting. I don't have a particular issue to try it with, 
but the bold-face certainly stands out enough that it was easy to ask for 
a high-light of any commits that changed the kernel/ subdirectory, and it 
was visually very obvious.

The interface does feel a bit awkward, though. Separating out "view" and 
"highlight" into two separate things seems wrong. Wouldn't it be better to 
just have multiple views in the "view" menu, and just a way to mark one or 
more of them as "highliht views". 

Ie not a separate menu, but having the current "view" radio buttons be 
more flexible. 

> I had been thinking of having fields in the view editor dialog where
> you could put in refs that you did and didn't want included, date
> specifiers, etc., all in separate fields with suitable labels.  Now
> I'm thinking that it's probably just as convenient to put
> "ORIG_HEAD.." into the git-rev-list arguments field as it is to put
> "ORIG_HEAD" in the "Don't include commits reachable from this" field.

Yeah. I think it's easier with a single thing, just let people stick it 
there.

> There may be an argument for having fields for "Exclude commits before
> this date" and "Exclude commits after this date", because those things
> often have spaces in them (e.g. "2 weeks ago") which would have to be
> quoted in the git-rev-list arguments field.

I alwaus use "2.weeks.ago" instead, but I guess you could do a calendar 
widget or something.

		Linus