[Unison-hackers] Usability suggestion: elide parts of long path names

Benjamin Pierce bcpierce at cis.upenn.edu
Sat Mar 12 11:43:57 EST 2005


This is a nice idea.  I'm not sure when it might happen, left to its own
devices (I've just spent a bunch of time tidying things up for the new
beta-release, and I need to work on some other stuff now!), but it would
not be too hard for you or someone else to take a look at -- the file
uitext.ml where it all happens is pretty simple.

Regards,

        Benjamin

> Guys,
>    I'm using Unison 2.9.1 with the text ui. I often sync disks with
> hundreds or thousands of changes. That takes me a while, and I'm
> looking for ways to speed up vetting the proposed changes.
> 
>    (Why do I vet each and every change first? Well, I may not be
> paranoid, but I don't think I miss it by much. And, I sometimes do
> things that Unison gets confused by. So, I do need the line-by-line
> decision making.)
> 
>    When I look at marked changes, I look for patterns. I want to look
> at three things, most of the time. I want to look at the first few
> columns, which tell me what kind of change is being made and in which
> direction. I look at the first part of the path name to see if it's in
> the same area as the previous change. I look at the file name to see
> if it is similar to or different than what I expect.
> 
>    When I use Unison on deeply nested directories with long path
> names, I have trouble doing that. Often the lines are very long, and I
> can't make the window wide enough to keep the text from wrapping to
> the next line. When the text wraps, the patterns are harder to see.
> Instead of the type of change being on the left and the file name on
> the right, the type is one line up and the file name below it, both on
> the left.
> 
>    To avoid this problem, I'd like Unison to take a width parameter,
> and to chop up path names to make them fit in this size. To chop
> things, I'd elide things from the middle of the name of a path
> component, starting in the middle of the path, and going outward to
> each end. The width parameter could either be a number, or a keyword
> that says to take the width from the window.
> 
>    For example, I'd elide
> Changed ---> Music-iTumes/iTunes/iTunes Music/Hildebrand, David &
> Hildebrand, Ginger/Over The Hills and Far Away/27 Planxty Fanny Power
> _ Oyle of Barley.mp3
> To
> Changed ---> Music-iTunes/iTunes/iTu…sic/Hild…ger/Over…way/27 Planxty
> Fanny Power _ Oyle of Barley.mp3
> 
>    I'd leave the first and last components untouched as much as
> possible. I'd elide from the middle of a name, leaving the first few
> and last few characters. I'd elide from the middle of a path, going
> toward both ends, but going first in the direction of longest path
> component names.
> 
>    If this catches anyone's interest, I'd like to see this feature
> show up someday.
> 
> Pat
> 
> ---
> Pat McGee
> Ph.D. Student, Computer Sciences Department, Florida Institute of
> Technology
> Treasurer, Association for Software Testing, Inc.
> (http://AssociationForSoftwareTesting.org)
> Editor, CS Department Tech Report Library (http://cs.fit.edu/~tr)
> 
> jpmcgee at cs.fit.edu
> http://cs.fit.edu/~jpmcgee
> http://blackbox.cs.fit.edu/blog/pat
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