[darcs-users] UI consistency

[Florent Becker]

Benjamin Frankes wrote:

> Apropos, some UI changes I'd like to propose to make the darcs experience 
> more predictable and even more useful than it already is:
> 
> changes:
>   --interactive should be the default; displaying the complete history of a
>   repository in one big rush is almost never what you want, except for
>   scripts that analyse the repo, and the default UI should always be
>   optimized for the interactive user.
> 
+1, but the hunks within each patch should be shown one by one, like we
do now.

> whatsnew:
>   should have a --interactive option (which should be the default),
>   the idea is hunks (and replaces, etc) are displayed one at a time;
>   I'd also like to have an option to select the type of change that
>   whatsnew reports, e.g --replace-only or --hunk-only.
> 

having --interactive is probably a good idea, making it the default
probably not: unrecorded changes tend not to be too numerous (at least
in my use), and interactive prompting when there's no input to be had
from the user is an annoyance.

For consistency, within 'pull', 'changes' and other commands which
display patches, we could add a 'i' keybinding for listing hunks
interactively. Would you find that useful?

> send:
>   --interactive should be the default; furthermore, it should *ask* whether
>   you want to edit the description, just as record does with the long
>   comment.
> 

--interactive is already the default, as far as I can tell. Maybe you're
referring to something else.

I'm not sure about asking whether to edit, it's yet another prompt, and
you can simply quit your editor if you don't want to modify it

> diff:
>   do not wait for the user to "Hit return to move on..."; I already ordered
>   darcs to do what I told it to do, so why do I have to confirm? If the idea
>   is to guard against (potentially destructive) errors in the configuration
>   file, why not rather add a --dry-run option, so I can try any changes out
>   and see what would be executed?
> 

This is when using --diff-command, right? I think this prompt is used in
case the diff-command exits before the user is done (some graphical
diffs do so, I think).

Thanks for your suggestions,

--
Florent