Re: [PATCH] graph.c: visual difference on subsequent series

Milton Soares Filho [off-list ref] writes:

On 28 October 2013 13:41, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

I agree to all of the above, including the ugliness of 'x' ;-)

A "blank" may however be hard to spot, if the range is limited,
though.  For example,

A 'x' looks like termination points in some specification languages
such as SDL and MSC and thus translates directly to the idea of a
root-commit, at least IMO. For sure it does not stand out as blatantly
as it should, but it gives a general idea without further
distractions, which seems to be the idea of a simple 'git log --graph
--oneline'.

An idea that have just come to mind is to have a decorator to enforce
this property, like this.

      * HEAD
     /* a1
    | * a2
    | * a3
    | x a4 (root-commit)
    * b1
    * b2
    x b3  (root-commit)

This way the user only gets 'distracted' if he explicitly asks for it
(--decorate), with all its colors and whatnot. What do you think?
Should I aim for it?

Besides anything else, this discussion is becoming very subjective.

If I have to choose, I'd rather avoid using 'x' or anything that
have to override '*', not just 'x' being ugly, but the approach to
_replace_ the "revision-mark" (usually '*' but sometimes '<', '^',
etc) forces us to give priority between "root-ness" and other kinds
of information (e.g. "left-ness").  That was the primary reason I
liked Keshav's suggestion to use one extra line _below_ the root,
which will allow us to still keep the existing information unlike
what we discussed in our back-and-forth during the initial review.

I also think a blank (or divider) below the root commits does make
it visually obvious that nothing comes _before_ the root commit in
the history, which probably even removes the need to paint the
tracks of histories leading to different roots in different colours.

I hope the above shows that my reaction was much less subjective
than my response sounded ;-)

Thanks.