Re: Tweaking magit/diff mode to be more helpful in text editing

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 12:49 PM, Eric Abrahamsen
> <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:
>
>> What I'd really like is to find a way (either a diff algorithm or a
>> Magit tweak) of only showing the actual edits, not the filling. And then
>> to still be able to export that in a way that will allow me to give the
>> author a file only showing those edits.
>>
>> Does anyone have any clever ideas in that direction?
>
> I have an idea.
> Whether it’s clever or stupid, is up to you.
>
> Do not fill paragraphs based on line width.
> Wrap lines at stable positions based on sentence structure
> such as sentence and clause boundaries
> like I’m doing here.
>
> This way, diffs will be compact
> (the worst case is when a single line grows too long
> and you split it at a logical point near the middle)
> and line breaks will be eliminated anyway
> when the document is rendered to HTML
> or whatever other form.
>
> (One disadvantage is that it looks like a poem.)

Ha, that would be quite a mental adjustment! I might give it a shot,
though. Perhaps my writing would improve if I treated it like poetry...