Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax

Re:Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax by pxeger1 on Thursday March 21, 2024 @06:23PM (#39785158)

The common advice[0] is to just write one sentence per line. I usually split at commas etc as well. Then use editor soft wrapping instead of fixing a maximum line length - but if your lines get longer than the screen width that might be a sign your sentences are too complex.

[0]: anyone have a good source for this? I’m not sure where I first encountered it

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Re:Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax by meatmanek on Thursday March 21, 2024 @09:07PM (#39786400)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31808093

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Re:Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax by bpeebles on Thursday March 21, 2024 @10:17PM (#39786809)

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/ is one possibility. And discusses a Kernighan Unix memo from 1974 advocating for the practice. "UNIX for Beginners" https://web.archive.org/web/20130108163017if_/http://miffy.t... (PDF)

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Re:Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax by abdullahkhalids on Thursday March 21, 2024 @10:32PM (#39786902)

I am not a slave of the machine. The machine is my tool. The machine will conform to what I want. Not the other way around.

There is no philosophy more important in this age.

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Re:Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax by antonvs on Thursday March 21, 2024 @11:16PM (#39787141)

In my work I encounter quite a few people beating their heads against walls trying to make the machine "conform to what they want".

You can often achieve your goals much more quickly by using tools they way they best support being used.

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Re:Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax by alpaca128 on Friday March 22, 2024 @05:40AM (#39788894)

And often there is a middleground. In this case one could write a script that outputs a reformatted file with one sentence per line. In Vim this could even be a simple macro as the editor already has a key for jumping to the next sentence.

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Re:Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax by sovietswag on Friday March 22, 2024 @12:37AM (#39787515)

It turns out that there is a lot of discourse out there about "semantic newlines", under a few different names. So far the names I've seen are:

- One Sentence Per Line (OSPL) - Semantic Line Breaks (SemBr) - Semantic Linefeeds - Ventilated Prose - Semantic newlines

Reading through the pages below was helpful in getting a better idea of what language people use to discuss this. They're mostly historical retrospectives or arguments for the merit of semantic newlines.

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line https://ramshankar.org/blog/posts/2019/semantic-line-breaks https://vanemden.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/ventilated-prose https://discuss.python.org/t/semantic-line-breaks/13874 https://discuss.python.org/t/one-sentence-per-line-for-peps-... https://sembr.org https://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoc-recommended-practices/...

(Actually I think one-sentence-per-line denotes something slightly different from semantic-line-breaks, not that I know what that difference is).

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Re:Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax by rokkitmensch on Friday March 22, 2024 @12:42AM (#39787541)

I will write excessively complex sentences whenever I darn please, and will be hogtied before I stop at the whims of a /diff tool/.

Mock outrage aside, whimsy and play in written language is vastly cheaper than in industrial programming environments. Provided, of course, the author can yet communicate while horsing around.

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Re:Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax by lupire on Friday March 22, 2024 @11:25AM (#39791638)

Did you misunderstand?

One sentence per line doesn't mean your sentence has to be limited in length.

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Re:Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax by rokkitmensch on Friday March 22, 2024 @12:05PM (#39792033)

> but if your lines get longer than the screen width that might be a sign your sentences are too complex

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