Me and Pavel were discussing about usability improvements in the new qgit (Qt4 based) that is going to replace the current Qt3 based one. Currently there are no released tarballs, just a git repo: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/qgit/qgit4.git but it's already quite stable and feature complete and works also under Windows. The biggest issue Pavel pointed out is that the main view does not show patch content. Currently qgit is tab based, so you have the main view tab with revision header info: http://digilander.libero.it/mcostalba/qgit4_1.png Or without header info ('toggle 'h' key) for bigger screen estate given to the revisions list: http://digilander.libero.it/mcostalba/qgit4_2.png Then to see the patch you have to switch to 'patch tab' ('p' key and 'r' key to go back to revisions list tab): http://digilander.libero.it/mcostalba/qgit4_3.png In case you need to give a deep look at the patch maybe it's worth toggling the split view with 's' key: http://digilander.libero.it/mcostalba/qgit4_4.png Form any tab you can navigate with 'i' (move up one) and 'n', 'k' (move down one) so that if you are interested in patch content only you can avoid going back ('r') to main tab and stay in patch tab while browsing the repo. But for Pavel this is not enough, and I agree with him, because you cannot see both the list and the patch content in one view. Long time ago qgit was using independent overlapping windows to show each kind of content, something similar to what git-gui uses now, then I switched to tabs because I found myself spending more time in arranging windows then in browsing contents. The legacy way to do it is the gitk way: patch content below revision log messages. I tried to study that approach and to understand why it is practical and handy, at least if you don't need to see the patch at full screen, as I need in case I really want understand a difficult patch, but probably this is a my limitation. What I found, the 'secret' of space screen saving also with patch content, is that when you look at the patch, scrolling down the bottom-left pane, the revision logs and messages automatically fade away because are scrolled out of the pane. So it seems that you can see revision list + log messages + patch content, but indeed what you see is revision list + log messages + *a couple of patch lines* _OR_ revision list + patch content. A natural consequence of this could be the introduction of another shortcut to toggle messages and patch content in main view bottom left pane.... After all this long introduction here we come to the subject of the e-mail. We need some help, in terms of ideas, to better arrange the information to be shown in main view so to improve repo browsability. I could implement almost anything good comes up in this thread. But still I don't figure out myself what is the best solution. Any suggestion is greatly appreciated. Marco P.S: To be a clone of gitk is not necessarily a design spec. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
