"Stephen J. Turnbull" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > The easier it is to commute syntactic patches, the > more carefully you need to check semantic prerequisites
I'm not sure I follow you. Could you give an example (of a LaTeX or other textual document) where commutation across a word based diff would break something and be less desirable than a conflict? Would this happen often enough compared to conflicts? > I strongly suspect the reason that > line-oriented hunks work as well as they do is that good style, if not > syntax, in most languages is line-oriented. In most *programming* languages. Conversely, the reason they work poorly for e.g. LaTeX documents is that good style isn't line oriented. I'm (of course) not saying you should always do word-based diffs, only for formats where line-based diffs work poorly. > It's in the packages. Check M-x list-packages. Didn't work. No matter, although I still don't see why a file format somehow imposes restrictions on the diff algorithms. Inconveniences, yes, restrictions no. > more than handle line-oriented text is the wrong idea (unless you want > to turn it into Yet Another Editor That's Smart). I agree. Which is why I don't think it should do more, just do differently. > You can probably get that down to O(n lg n) or better on average by Sure. I mean - do a linewise diff first, and then do a wordwise diff on each hunk of changed lines. Even with O(n²) behaviour, the cost is now only an additive factor of O(m²) over the normal diff, where m is words per hunk. > Which is another reason why the algorithms should be under control > of a scriptable editor.... As long as I don't *depend* on the editor to manipulate (apply, pull, push, record..) patches or depend on separately distributed functionality. -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list [email protected] http://www.abridgegame.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
