Jeremy I do see its "accurate" as a representation of a kind. Though some of the *colouration is not logical--that is a compounded styling fault* I think--but important to note as it might be addressed?
The problem is the demands on the user to 1, grasp its just a representation, not what is happening to your stuff :-)! 2. make an informed choice to go ahead. Does it inform or confuse? I think the example I gave is one if I didn't know regular expressions well I'd never click yes to because of the TWO levels of abstraction--first what the regex pattern means and second judging where a representation of its result makes sense. Subjectively the representation looks all over the shop. Indeed if you slightly change the pattern it shuffles around endlessly like a Chinese Puzzle. It may be we need to show also a normal preview too in such SNR cases? On Tuesday, 19 March 2019 22:24:17 UTC+1, Jeremy Ruston wrote: > > Hi Josiah > > To explain it another way, the example diff you quoted earlier was > "correct", in that it is an accurate depiction of a set of modifications > which will turn the first string into the second. The problem is that what > an algorithm sees as a reasonable way to display the differences may not > match a human narrative of the changes. It's a general problem with diff > engines, and they all devote a lot of attention to trying to improve human > readability. The diff engine we're using is pretty much the state of the > art. There's no magic solution: we can tweak the parameters that drive the > heuristics used for diffing, but we will find that any given set of > parameters will be good in some scenarios but not others. There's no magic > solution which will work in all situations; that's what I meant by saying > that it's one of those tricky problems of computer science :) > > Best wishes > > Jeremy > > > -- > Jeremy Ruston > jer...@jermolene.com <javascript:> > https://jermolene.com > > On 19 Mar 2019, at 20:36, @TiddlyTweeter <tiddly...@assays.tv > <javascript:>> wrote: > > Jeremy > > I definitely think access to change parameters could be helpful. > > In the case of SNR one needs a logical consistent representation. It > doesn't matter if its very long--so long as its consistent. > > The biggest problem at the moment is the Diff. Engine creates a mix of > representations that can quickly get visually inconsistent. > > That is seriously confusing for the end user who is already grappling with > learning regular expression syntax. > > Best wishes > Josiah > > On Tuesday, 19 March 2019 20:45:00 UTC+1, Jeremy Ruston wrote: >> >> Hi Josiah, Mohammad, >> >> The core uses Google's Diff-Match-Patch library by Neil Fraser: >> >> https://github.com/google/diff-match-patch >> >> It turns out that reliably creating human-readable diffs is one of those >> tricky problems in computer science that doesn't have a clean solution. The >> docs for the library discuss some parameters that can be tweaked to control >> things: >> >> https://github.com/google/diff-match-patch/wiki/API >> >> Maybe we should expose all of the parameters as attributes on the >> DiffTextWidget, making it easier for people to experiment with different >> settings. >> >> Best wishes >> >> Jeremy >> >> -- >> Jeremy Ruston >> jer...@jermolene.com >> https://jermolene.com >> >> On 19 Mar 2019, at 15:13, Mohammad <mohammad...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> What Josiah said can be tested on SNR at >> >> https://kookma.github.io/TW-Commander/ >> >> It seems the Tiddlywiki diff-text works fine for simple cases like >> alphanumeric but working with more complex cases like regexp, it encounter >> difficulties. >> >> --Mohammad >> >> On Tuesday, March 19, 2019 at 5:08:54 PM UTC+3:30, @TiddlyTweeter wrote: >>> >>> The Difference Engine is an incredibly useful feature of TW. For >>> writers, for coders, for versioning systems that are now commonly used. >>> And, more recently, in tools like Mohammad's regular expressions based >>> Search-n-Replace. >>> >>> The problem is its visual presentation (it does not harm the writing, it >>> just) under some circumstances is extremely misleading. >>> >>> For instance ... Actually the edit here was only to remove *<* & > but >>> the differences shown are very confusing with many items in green and pink >>> that should not be, and with inconsistent presentation that is even more >>> confusing. >>> >>> I wonder if it can be made more accurate? >>> >>> [image: diff-view-5.jpg] >>> >>> >>> Best wishes >>> Josiah >>> >>> >>> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "TiddlyWiki" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to tiddl...@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/f66e485c-50c8-4ca0-9c92-47c1363c9ca3%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/f66e485c-50c8-4ca0-9c92-47c1363c9ca3%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TiddlyWiki" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. > To post to this group, send email to tiddl...@googlegroups.com > <javascript:>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/b20a5e11-8a1e-4b69-931d-2f58bce7da60%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/b20a5e11-8a1e-4b69-931d-2f58bce7da60%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. 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