Subject: Re: git-blame.el: does not show one-line summary in echo area

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2011 20:29:28 -0600

David Kågedal wrote:

> I whipped up a patch anyway. This adds an echo area message shown after
> 0.5 seconds of idleness, using the git-blame-echo-format format string.
> Try it and see if makes sense. I can clean it up (and split it up)
> later.

Sorry for the slow response.

Some quick impressions:

 - The 0.5 second delay is noticeable but not terrible.

   The instantaneous response from the older point-entered based
   code was kind of nice --- too bad it has to go.

 - There is no obvious way to copy the (abbreviated or full) hash
   associated to the current line to the clipboard (for pasting in
   another terminal).

   People more familiar with emacs might want "git show" output in
   another buffer when the line is double-clicked or something. :)
   That would work for me, too (since I could copy the hash from
   there).

 - A nice brief oneline format is

	[%h] %a: %s

   which goes well with a git-blame-prefix-format of

	%t

 - The time format (%c) is rather verbose.  I think I prefer %D
   (so maybe this is a potential tweakable?).

 - email addresses are often longer than 20 characters.  Does
   format-spec provide a way to truncate to a certain length,
   so the prefixes can line up?

 - in general, I like it.  Thanks.

Jonathan