[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
RE: buttons for the ediff control frame
From: |
Drew Adams |
Subject: |
RE: buttons for the ediff control frame |
Date: |
Thu, 2 Mar 2006 14:18:57 -0800 |
Understanding how to use the ediff little control frame is kind of
hard for first time users.
It might help if it had some graphical buttons...
A few buttons for the most used functions should be enough.
Keep 'em small, please.
IMO, graphics that represent the various actions might not be very
self-explanatory. But it could in any case be good to have clickable
buttons, even if they were really just hot text zones. Some suggestions on
graphics/text below. The "buttons" could be hot zones in the ediff help
buffer or in its mode line.
In general, I like the idea. It's like a tiny control panel, such as you use
for a video or music player.
Here are some suggestions - current bindings in brackets ([]), proposed
textual "buttons" in braces ({}).
-next + previous
{graphic/text: ">", "<"}
first (top) [j]
{graphic/text: "<<"}
-copy A->B, B->A
{graphic/text: "B:=A", "A:=B"}
goto A's current [ga], goto B's current [ga]
{graphic/text: "A", "B" (or perhaps ">A", ">B")}
recompute (update) [!]
{graphic/text: "&" (again) or "!"}
-revert A, revert B
I never use those - are they more useful than just reverting the buffer(s)?
-quit
{graphic/text: "X" (or "Quit")}
-help
{graphic/text: "?"}
refine [*]
{graphic/text: "..."}
toggle ignoring whitespace [##]
{graphic/text: "st=s t"}
toggle ignoring (upper/lower) case [#c]
{graphic/text: "St=sT"}
The last one is not yet in ediff, but it can be quite useful and I believe
that Michael Kifer is working on it. FWIW, here is some code that provides
it, for now: http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/ediff%2b.el.
The control panel ("button" bar) might then look something like this (over
one or more lines):
<< < > A B A:=B B:=A
& ... st=s t St=sT ? X
It would probably be better to use "!" instead of "&", for consistency, but
"&" seems more suggestive of the meaning, to me.
"ab=a b" and "Ab=aB" would be more logical ("abcde" naturally stands for a
text string), but there would then be confusion with the use of "A" and "B"
as representatives of the two buffers.