Jim, I appreciate your feedback, based on it I'm currently tinkering with the HTML to figure out a better way. Would you (and RH?) be interested in reviewing it when I'm done to see if you can think of any improvements? After I'm done mocking up some HTML I'll implement it and go ahead and resubmit the patch. I think I figured out how to use tables to do what you want but still have the look I want. I'm also going to switch to utilize the viewCVS color scheme. Please note that some of your "next" alignment problems may be caused by the text size setting. I've seen certain text size settings in Microsoft Internet Explorer that don't work as well. I typically select the smallest text size and never have problems. I'm hoping to make this a non-issue with what I'm going to propose. Thanks, Dan Gass
I appreciate your feedback, based on it I'm currently tinkering with the HTML to figure out a better way. Would you (and RH?) be interested in reviewing it when I'm done to see if you can think of any improvements?
Yes. If you can, get it in soon to avoid getting to close to the alpha release date.
I think I figured out how to use tables to do what you want but still have the look I want. I'm also going to switch to utilize the viewCVS color scheme. Please note that some of your "next" alignment problems may be caused by the text size setting. I've seen certain text size settings in Microsoft Internet Explorer that don't work as well. I typically select the smallest text size and never have problems. I'm hoping to make this a non-issue with what I'm going to propose.
Please segregate all of this stuff in a single section devoted to configuration and make it easy to change without affecting the rest of the implementation logic. Raymond
Raymond, I'm attaching two samples of the latest side by side differencing HTML output from/of the difflib.py patch. If you get the chance, look at the samples at let me know what you think of how they look/function. The samples themselves show the patched code. I'm hoping some HTML experts see this and can offer some tips on improving it (I would be tickled if someone could tell me how to force the browser to select text from a single column -- right now a selection over multiple lines gets text from all the columns). The HTML output is alot less sensitive to browser quirks and I think looks better than what I previously had (I took some color schemes from viewCVS). I have simplified the user interface ALOT without sacrificing flexibility which will also make writing the required documentation more manageable. I looked at the output on IE, Mozilla, and Konquerer. Konquerer gave some extra grid lines between all the rows which was annoying but the other two looked great.
If you can, get it in soon to avoid getting to close to the alpha release date.
I will try to get something to you soon. I mainly have comment and coding convention cleanup to do. Barring no major changes, no later than the end of June.
Please segregate all of this stuff in a single section devoted to configuration and make it easy to change without affecting the rest of the implementation logic.
Hopefully the reorganization using a new style class for HTML differencing addresses this. If not I will need to talk to you a bit more to see what you have in mind. Regards, Dan Gass
Dan Gass wrote:
Raymond,
I'm attaching two samples of the latest side by side differencing HTML output from/of the difflib.py patch. If you get the chance, look at the samples at let me know what you think of how they look/function.
The file is a strange mix of HTML and XHTML. It contains <br> and <td nowrap> (i.e. HTML) and <a name="_chg_to_0"/> without any end tag (i.e. real XML). I'd prefer a patch that generates valid XML, which is backwards compatible (i.e. <br /> and <a name="_chg_to_0"></a>). All attributes should be quoted. The file uses a mix of name and id attributes (but not everywhere). All style information should be moved to an external file. The URL of this external file should be a parameter for the generation process. Padding line numbers with 0s is confusing IMHO. The additional <span class=sub>...</span> is unneccessary as the class could be put into the <td>. What about encoding issues? The HTML file doesn't contain any encoding declaration, so it will default to latin-1 regardless of the encoding of the original files. Unfortunately this is rather difficult to fix. Bye, Walter Dörwald
If you can, get it in soon to avoid getting to close to the alpha release date.
I just submitted an updated patch to the sourceforge patch (914575). I based the patch on diff.py(CVS1.1) and difflib.py(CVS1.20) which was the latest I saw today on viewCVS. The following enhancements were made: 1) user interface greatly simplified for generating HTML (see diff.py for example) 2) generated HTML now 4.01 Transitional compliant (so says HTML Tidy) 3) HTML color scheme for differences now matches that used by viewCVS. 4) differences table now has a row for each line making the HTML less susceptible to browser quirks. 5) took care of all issues to date enumerated on the sourceforge patch (plus suggestions from others). As of now the only feature I may want to add in the near future is optional tab expansion. This should be a fairly simple change and shouldn't break anything.
Please segregate all of this stuff in a single section devoted to configuration and make it easy to change without affecting the rest of the implementation logic.
I hope my reorganization of the user interface for the HTML generation took care of this concern. If not please let me know in more detail what you had in mind. If you think this has a good shot at getting into Python I'll start writing up some user documentation for the python manuals (it should be alot easier because of the latest changes). What is the next step for getting this into Python? *** CALL FOR HELP (to Java/HTML experts) *** It would be great if I could get some help on: A) getting some SIMPLE JavaScript? written to be able to select and cut text from a single column (right now text is selected from the whole row including both "from" and "to" text and line numbers. B) solving the line width issue. Currently the "from" / "to" column is as wide as the widest line. Any ideas on wrapping or scrolling? Thanks, Dan Gass
participants (3)
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Dan Gass -
Raymond Hettinger -
Walter Dörwald