A better/clearer diff
edgewall trac has a very nice diff implementation, look at http://projects.edgewall.com/trac/wiki/WikiStart?action=diff&version=101&old_version=97.
it would be great to have something like this as an option in moin too.
I also think that the current diff here is not so good. How do I come back to the article? I often open diffs in tabs. Right now I am stuck. I would tend to use something similar as Mediawiki (If one page has many options like "Diff",etc.) then list them as tabs inside the page so that users can click on "article" and do not have to use the back-button. -- ThiloPfennig 2005-10-31 16:37:12
You don't have to use the back button to get back to the article, just click on the page name in your navibar (modern or classic theme).
BTW, this has nothing to do with the diff, so this stuff is on the wrong feature request page and should be removed after reading this.
I agree that MoinMoin can use better diffs. Why? Because not enough surrounding text is displayed with the diff. If a new paragraph is added, you have no idea what the context is because the previous sentence isn't shown. Mediawiki does a good job with diffs and shows everything in context. The Trac system linked about at http://projects.edgewall.com/trac/wiki/WikiStart?action=diff&version=101&old_version=97 does a great job, probably the best because the entire article with changes highlighted are shown in context...it makes it very quick and easy to see whether the given changes were appropriate given the preceeding and procedding text. -- RyanK 2024-04-29 00:42:57 Set "show fancy diffs" in your UserPreferences and use monobook theme - this is a very good mimikry of wikipedia style. -- RobertSeeger 2005-12-23 11:59:20
"show fancy diffs" is worse, in some ways... While I like seeing old & new side-by-side, and the individual character change highlighting is very handy... the fancy diff gives you absolutely no context before and after the change. Can we somehow combine the two to get the best of both worlds? I know that the "fancy diff" provides an anchor link for each diff, but you have to jump back and forth too much and it's hard to find the changes in the rendered page. Most of the time it seems that the page is not long enough for the anchor to position the changed line exactly at the top of the page, so you're left with "well, it's on this page somewhere" and you have to search for it. Some ideas for possible improvements: 1) Add a bunch of blank lines to the bottom of the page so that the anchor position is always at the top, 2) insert a highlight or special icon in the page contents right before any changed paragraph/line (maybe even highlight the whole new sections), and/or 3) Simply put as much context around the changes as the "not-fancy" diff does. -- SteveDavison 2007-08-26 03:59:07
1.5 (as you see here) offers a link from the diff area to the right place on the rendered page below, so you have ALL context there. Some months ago I did experiment with a "in text" diff. There are cases when that is nice, but there are also other cases when it makes stuff unusable, so I decided to keep old method. -- ThomasWaldmann 2005-12-23 12:24:20
I'd like to see line numbers down the left hand side with changes highlighted inline on the page content / diff output rather than a list of changes at the top of the page.