Re: Tweaking magit/diff mode to be more helpful in text editing

[Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>]

On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 12:49 PM, Eric Abrahamsen
<eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:

> What I'd really like is to find a way (either a diff algorithm or a
> Magit tweak) of only showing the actual edits, not the filling. And then
> to still be able to export that in a way that will allow me to give the
> author a file only showing those edits.
>
> Does anyone have any clever ideas in that direction?

I have an idea.
Whether it’s clever or stupid, is up to you.

Do not fill paragraphs based on line width.
Wrap lines at stable positions based on sentence structure
such as sentence and clause boundaries
like I’m doing here.

This way, diffs will be compact
(the worst case is when a single line grows too long
and you split it at a logical point near the middle)
and line breaks will be eliminated anyway
when the document is rendered to HTML
or whatever other form.

(One disadvantage is that it looks like a poem.)