Subject: Re: git notes question

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2022 09:52:01 -0800

Nuno Sá <[email-masked]> writes:

>> Well, this time it was "Notes:" label, but the next person who
>> wants to see a deviation from the canned "email" format would want a
>> deviation different from yours.  Perhaps they want a different way
>
> I'm surely missing something but I'm not sure this is specific to the
> email format? It's just that git-notes by default will always either
> append the "Notes:" or "Notes (<refname>):" independent of the
> predefined format you use. The only way to stop it from doing that is,
> apparently, by using your own --format=<template>...
> ...
> What I was asking was just if there was a way to not use these default
> strings. I don't think this would open all kind of deviations.

Not limited to the email format.  "git log" will always prefix
"Author: " before the commit author name, "Date: " date with extra
paddingbefore the author, indents the log message by 4 spaces, adds
"Notes (refname):" before notes, and indentation is given before the
contents of the notes.  There are many things, other than the
presence of the "Notes" label, that people may want to customize in
the output from the commands in the "git log" family, including "git
format-patch".

I think you were too focused on "Notes" tree to lose the view of the
forest.  A line is drawn not to special case "Notes" prefix, because
there is no reason to do so without allowing all other things to
also be tweaked, and it will "open all kind of deviations".