Tab characters in the lower pane of Compare tool

[browny]

Windows 11, TC 11.50 64-bit
There is no issue with seeing the end of long lines in the upper two panes, but in the lower pane scrolling unexpectedly stops somewhere before the end.
The line was not too long, less than 256 characters, but it has a bunch of tabs at the beginning (tab width = 4).
Replacing tabs with equvalent space characters allows to scroll to the end.

Additional note: It seems Ctrl+Left/Ctrl+Right is not used here and could jump by 10 characters, because scroll by 1 character is slow (something like this has bean already requested, if I remember correctly).

[petermad]

because scroll by 1 character is slow (something like this has bean already requested, if I remember correctly).

You can scroll the lower panel horizontally with the mouse wheel - it scrolls 50 characters .

[browny]

Thanks for the info. Rolling acts somewhat macOS-like, the direction was opposite to the expected.
Also wheel tilt moves by 10 symbols.
But having keyboard shortcuts is still desirable in some cases.

[ghisler(Author)]

Moderator message from: ghisler(Author) » 2025-01-14, 08:39 UTC

Moved to English forum

[browny]

This is a bug report - line ends could not be seen, not a question how to scroll.
It does not matter how scrolling was done - with mouse or keyboard.

Should be fixed.

[ghisler(Author)]

What do you mean with "could not be seen"? Did you try to scroll them into view as described above?

[AntonyD]

2ghisler(Author)
It’s not entirely clear - WHO and HOW proved to you that in the bottom panel it is enough to simply provide some kind of scrolling
and DO NOT use scroll bars to visualize this process: And so that we can almost INSTANTLY If necessary, move to the end of this
"comparison" panel.
BUT it is essentially impossible to use it - even if only because the number of characters that you allow to scroll is inadmissibly small.

[petermad]

And so that we can almost INSTANTLY If necessary, move to the end of this
"comparison" panel.

You can focus the comparison panel and press the End key to get to the the end immediately.

I have not been able to reproduce browny's problem about not being able to get to the en with the arrow-right key. But it could depend on the exact lines, the font setting and the size of the window.

So if a a couple of test files (or strings) and the settings in wincmd.ini for the used resolution:

Code: Select all

CompareX=
CompareY=
CompareDx=
CompareDy=
CompareMax=
CompareDivider=
CompFontName=
Compfontsize=
CompCharSet=
CompFontStyle=

could be provided, then we can test under the same conditions as browny

[AntonyD]

You can focus the comparison panel and press the End key to get to the the end immediately.

And sometimes there is simply no end to this - exactly as our colleague browny describes the problem
And I wrote about the visuality and adequacy of the need for these bars.
Otherwise, you can bring the level of advice to the phrase - “it is recommended to use third-party programs
for all comparison purposes.”
But we are trying to improve this particular product - Total! Instead of switching everyone to other products..

[ghisler(Author)]

I have checked this now: The scrollable width of the lower panel is set to the number of characters of the line. Tabs are not taken into account, they are only counted during the initial compare phase. I will just set the max scroll width of the lower panel to the longest line when a file contains tabs. The downside is that you can then also scroll sideways when the line is short.

[browny]

There are only two lines in the lower pane; calculating the width on the fly should give a minor overhead with reasonable line lengths.
You may even calculate the width only if scrolling has started.
Otherwise, maximum width is better than not being able to scroll. Standard scroll bars use too much space, but a narrow graphical indication of the current position might be handy in this case (1-3 pixels wide).

[browny]

No such issue in 64-bit 11.51rc1.
Thanks.

[browny]

Should this be moved to TC Fixed bugs?

[ghisler(Author)]

It was never in the bug reports forum, just in the English discussion forum, so I'm not sure about that.

[browny]

Moved to English forum

This topic was created in bugs; the bug was fixed. The rest is up to you.