The discussion revolves around improving the visibility of changes in posts, particularly when no text changes occur. jidanni suggests that the system should visually highlight differences, such as by drawing a box around changes, to help users quickly identify what has changed. They note that current methods, like line-by-line comparisons, can confuse new users who might not understand the formatting. JammyDodger explains that text changes are normally highlighted in red (deleted) and green (added), but category changes are shown differently at the top. awesomerobot proposes displaying the topic title as it appears in the topic and highlighting it. jidanni emphasizes the issue of users feeling misled when no actual changes exist, comparing it to a Unix pr command output. jidanni also raises the concern about showing excessive context lines when only minor changes occur, suggesting a more efficient approach to displaying differences.
Here I have drawn a box around my guess of the only thing that changed in the two things being shown.
It would be great if the program did too, to save users long head scratching sessions where they read line by line looking for missing commas, or other clues to what Discourse is trying to communicate to them as to where the differences lie.
Another approach is: if none of the text has changed, then don’t show the text at all, just show the title, and only once too.
FWIW Any difference in text would normally be highlighted in red for deleted and green for added if there were any changes to the body of the post.
As it looks like it was just a category change it shows the ‘old category → new category’ at the top instead.
I think we should consider showing the topic title as it’s displayed in the topic as well as highlighting it?
Something like:
We already position the tags below the title (though the position is weird, we should show solved on the left, then search + solved on the right in this example)
Thanks for the suggestion @jidanni
That’s the problem.
Experienced users will know that the white stuff can be ignored.
But new users will exclaim “Ah, how clever, those fellows are using UNIX pr”
$ pr --merge --omit-header /etc/motd.old /etc/motd.new
The programs included with the Debi The programs included with the Debi
the exact distribution terms for ea the exact distribution terms for ea
individual files in /usr/share/doc/ individual files in /usr/share/doc/
Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUT Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUT
permitted by applicable law. permitted by applicable law.
The problem is /etc/motd.old = /etc/motd.new ,
so after spending a long time comparing,
the user feels hoodwinked.
Also think about how many context lines you need to show around diffs.
Do you really want to show all 7857 lines if only the first couple have changed, or in this case, zero have changed?