[darcs-users] darcs annotate format obscures the code

[Thomas Zander]

On Sunday 20 March 2005 02:49, Michael G Schwern wrote:
> Yuck!  For every line of code there's many lines of annotation.  For
> every annotation there's about 20 characters of repetition 
...
> Where's the code?  Code is distinguished by a single leading space, not
> much of a visual distinguisher at the best of times, but so are the (oft
> repeated) log messages embedded in the annotation making it almost
> impossible to tell code from annotation without careful study.

I usually output the annotation to a file and then open the file with VI.  
It makes all the stuff starting with '#' blue and the rest is black.  Quite 
readable.  Although it usually is still enough to make me use the search 
functions of my editor.

> Its nice to have the full log message along with every line of code but
> not at the expense of obscuring what's being annotated.  Perhaps this
> could be achieved in a more dynamic format than text, such as a web page,
> but in plain text it just gets in the way.

The reason for this is simple (so you understand where this is coming from) 
darcs does not use version numbers it uses unique-names for each patch.  
That is exactly what you are seeing.  The logmessage is the 'key' for each 
commit.
From the technical point of view; this is as brief as it will get if you 
want it to stay technically correct.

> One of my questions here is... does anyone use this and like this?  Its
> possible I'm just used to the CVS/SVK format and not using the darcs
> format to its fullest.

Well, I actually dislike cvs annotate about as much as darcs annotate, in 
that it give me too little information instead of too much.
I usually start a GUI (like cervisia) to browse this kind of info.
IMO optimisations like this are not really usefull since you won't ever 
create an understandable UI without a graphical UI.

And for a GUI interpreting the normal or the xml output is quite easy to 
create :)
-- 
Thomas Zander
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