[chora] chora image diff

Ryan Gallagher ryan@studiesabroad.com
Tue, 20 Aug 2002 21:58:19 -0500


Quoting Eric Rostetter <eric.rostetter@physics.utexas.edu>:

> 
> Been meaning to post for several days, never get around to it... Too busy.
> 
> Anyway, I think I've departed down the wrong path on this mime-specific
> diffing stuff.  
> 
> I picked the "side-by-side" diff to change for displaying images
> side-by-side.
> It made some sense in this one case, but doesn't scale well at all.  It 
> makes coding things for other mime types much more difficult.  We
> could do it, case-by-case, trying to map what we are doing into the existing
> categories, but this is really not a very good design.
> 
> Also, how is the user to know that "side-by-side" will act differently for
> images than everything else?  We could put it in the help/docs, but it
> just doesn't seem logical to proceed this way as it isn't intuitive to
> the user that things will change based on mime type.
> 
> So what I think we should do instead is to add one or more new diff
> categories
> to the existing ones.  We could simply add a "MIME specific" diff entry,
> and use that, as long as we don't think any mime type will require more
> than one alternate diff format.  I can't think of two many ways to diff
> mime-specific items that don't apply generally, so I think we could limit
> this to one, or at most two, additional mime-specific tags.
> 
> I can also think of some none-mime-specific diff formats we could add
> if there is interest, via external programs, like using cmp, comm, etc.
> 
> I'd like to start working on that, but won't have any time until later.
> 
> I also like the idea of diffing xml files.  I'm willing to work on a
> semi-professional version of this.  Or we could require external programs
> that do a more professional compare, but I can't find any free software
> of that quality, and can't afford the commerical stuff...

I would be interested in helping with this XML (and other structured diff)
project. I had the idea originally but I have only visited XML topics with
merely an _interested eye_ and am by no means proficient.  Regardless i'm
willing to give it some of my time.  

> Anyway, no time to work on any of this now, but wanted to put it "out
> there" anyway...
> 

-- 
Ryan T. Gallagher
ryan@studiesabroad.com
International Studies Abroad
http://www.studiesabroad.com
(512)480-8522