[Patches] [ python-Patches-914575 ] difflib side by side diff support, diff.py s/b/s HTML option

Thu Jul 15 08:30:08 CEST 2004

Patches item #914575, was opened at 2004-03-12 00:50
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by loewis
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Category: Modules
Group: Python 2.4
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 6
Submitted By: Dan Gass (dmgass)
Assigned to: Raymond Hettinger (rhettinger)
Summary: difflib side by side diff support, diff.py s/b/s HTML option

Initial Comment:
lib/difflib.py:

Added support for generating side by side differences.  
Intended to be used for generating HTML pages but is 
generic where it can be used for other types of markup.

tools/scripts/diff.py:

Added -m option to use above patch to generate an 
HTML page of side by side differences between two 
files.  The existing -c option when used with the new -m 
option controls whether contextual differences are 
shown or whether the entire file is displayed (number of 
context lines is controlled by existing -l option).

NOTES:
(1) Textual context diffs were included as requested.  In 
addition, full and contextual HTML side by side 
differences (that this patch generated) are also included 
to assist in analyzing the differences and showing an 
example.

(2) If this functionality is worthy of inclusion in the 
standard python distribution, I am willing to provide more 
documentation or make modifications to change the 
interface or make improvements.

(3) When using Internet Explorer some font sizes seem 
to skew things a bit.  Generally I've found the "smallest" 
to work best.  If someone knows why, I'd be interested 
in making any necessary adjustments in the generated 
HTML.

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>Comment By: Martin v. Löwis (loewis)
Date: 2004-07-15 08:30

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The pack lacks changes to the documentation (libdifflib.tex)
and changes to the test suite. Please always submit patches
as single unified or context diffs, rather than zip files of
the revised files.

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Comment By: Dan Gass (dmgass)
Date: 2004-07-02 20:17

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With the updated patch code I just posted, both full and
contextual differences pass the validator.w3.org check
(XHTML 1.0 Transitional).  Also the extra carriage returns
put in by DOS were removed from the difflib.py patch.

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Comment By: Walter Dörwald (doerwalter)
Date: 2004-06-25 20:01

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Submitting difflib_context.html to validator.w3.org gives 2333 
errors. The character encoding is missing and there's no 
DOCTYPE declaration. The rest of the errors seem to be 
mostly related to the nowrap attribute (which must be written 
as nowrap="nowrap", as this is the only allowed value). 
Furthermore the patch contains a mix of CR and CRLF 
terminated lines.

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Comment By: Dan Gass (dmgass)
Date: 2004-06-24 08:23

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I just attached an updated patch.  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 here in this 
patch.

It would be great if I could get some help on:
A) getting some 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?

As of now the only feature I may want to add in the near 
future is optional tab expansion.

Thanks to those that have commented here and emailed me 
with suggestions and advice!

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Comment By: Jim Jewett (jimjjewett)
Date: 2004-06-11 16:35

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Thank you; I have often wished for side-by-side, but not quite 
badly enough to write it.

That said, I would recommend some tweaks to the formatting.

"font" is deprecated; "span" would be better. 

On my display, the "next" lines don't always seem to be 
counted (except the first one), so that the anchors column is 
not lined up with the others.  (This would also be fixed by the 
separate rows suggestion.)

Ideally, the line numbers would be in a separate column from 
the code, to make cut'n'paste easier.  (Then you could replace 
font.num (or span.num) with td.linenum.)

Ideally, each change group should be a separate row in the 
table.  (I realize that this probably means a two-layer iterator, 
so that the line breaks and blank lines can be inserted 
correctly in the code columns.)

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Comment By: Dan Gass (dmgass)
Date: 2004-04-29 06:30

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Also, I will need to submit the fix for making it behave nice 
when there are no differences!!

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Comment By: Dan Gass (dmgass)
Date: 2004-04-09 15:30

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In the time since submission I've found that the interface to 
the chgFmt and lineFmt functions (arguments of mdiff) should 
include both the line number and an indication of side 
(from/to).  The use for it I've found is for dropping anchors 
into the generated markup that it can be hyperlinked from 
elsewhere.

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