Text Details

[Michael Bulgrien]

I know this has been hashed over a few times...but I don't think the current functionality is working quite right yet...

When I press Ctrl-N, the text details scrolls to the position of the first difference in the line. This is the expected functionality when the difference would otherwise be off the screen (i.e. comparing lines that are longer than the text details field).

However, when the lines being compared are shorter than the text details field, then the entire line should be displayed in the text details and it should not be scrolled to the first difference.

Also, the line should not scroll so far that the majority of the text details is blank. If the first difference is at the end of a long line, then I would expect the end of the line to positioned at the right end of the text details field and the difference appear in the middle of the text details instead of at the very beginning followed by a mostly blank line.

I don't know how the horizontal scrollbar for the text details is defined, but it seems to me that these problems would not occur if the scroll area were defined to length of longest line currently visible in the text details section. This would make it impossible to scroll the text off of the screen and would eliminate both of the problems described above.

[Michael Bulgrien]

It looks like improvements have been implemented since my initial post. Thank you.

[WarrenStanley]

Additional text details changes

In addition the above mentioned changes, having some sort of indication of the presence/absence of significant differences that are out of view (scrolled off of screen on either side) would be really useful when looking at files that contain long lines.

[Erik]

That's what the background coloring is for. Also, you can use "Next Difference" [Shift+Ctrl+N] to move to the next difference in the line.

[Tim]

In addition to the background coloring, I can see it would be valuable to have some sort of visual indication that there are "still more differences" off-screen. I'm pretty sure this has been requested in the past and I'll make sure it's on the wishlist. If we implemented it, we would probably limit it to the Line Details area to avoid cluttering the main view.

[WarrenStanley]

Limiting any extra indication to the Line Details area is what I thought would be most practical, but someone may be able to see a nice way of adding it to the main comparison pains without adding in to the clutter.

Thank you,
Warren.

[Michael Bulgrien]

Thanks Tim... I can see the value in this too. A bar of color on the beginning and end of the Line Details area, perhaps (two pixels wide, perhaps)... Red for significant changes off screen, Blue for unimportant changes off screen, and white for no changes (or colored according to the users selected color scheme).

Even nicer would be a clickable "◄" at the beginning of the line or a clickable "►" at the end of the line to take you to the next or previous change on that line. When there are no changes off screen, then gray out the ◄► characters.