16 votes

In deeply nested discussions, it's frequently hard to know to which comment someone is answering

Posted by mrbig (edited )
Tags: suggestions, self post, emacs, comments, org mode

IDK if this is just me, but, in some cases, the dotted lines are not enough. I become easily lost, and have to "manually" retrace the discussion.

I'd like to suggest for Tildes to use even more colors on these lines, kinda like color-schemes do for Org Mode on Emacs.

I could go even further and suggest a major "Org-Modization" of Tildes: IMHO, Org Mode has nailed this kind of structure. I know it's a bold suggestion, but there it is! ;)

Cheers!

9 comments

  1. [5]
    Comment deleted by author
    Link
    1. [4]
      mrbig
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      1. Definition From Wikipedia: Org Mode is a very large piece of software that is hard to summarize, but I'll try. It's basically a built-in Emacs package that makes it very easy to work with text...

      1. Definition

      From Wikipedia:

      Org-mode is a document editing, formatting, and organizing mode, designed for notes, planning, and authoring within the free software text editor Emacs.

      Org Mode is a very large piece of software that is hard to summarize, but I'll try.

      It's basically a built-in Emacs package that makes it very easy to work with text in an outline hierarchized fashion, but also has powerful task/planning/agenda management tools.

      It's hard to say which of these parts is more important (even more so because they're deeply related).

      You can write novels in Org Mode. You can program in Org Mode. You can organize all your appointments in Org Mode. You can create a personal wiki, with working links, using Org Mode. You can create an actual database using Org Mode.

      2. Demonstration

      Everything in Org Mode is hierarchized in a very visual way. It's easy to understand what is a child of what. I made this video demonstration to make it easier to understand.

      2 votes
      1. [2]
        ggfurasta
        Link Parent
        To me, it seems like Org Mode is what we already have but just with everything collapsed. Maybe if the "Collapse replies" button collapsed everything (including the replies to the replies), you...

        To me, it seems like Org Mode is what we already have but just with everything collapsed. Maybe if the "Collapse replies" button collapsed everything (including the replies to the replies), you could get what you are looking for.

        3 votes
        1. mrbig
          (edited )
          Link Parent
          Org has a number of characters in each headline that indicates its depth, and they always have different colors. On vanilla Org uses only asterisks, the example I showed is altered with the...

          Org has a number of characters in each headline that indicates its depth, and they always have different colors. On vanilla Org uses only asterisks, the example I showed is altered with the package org-bullets to also change the nature of characters in addition to its amount.

          2 votes
  2. [4]
    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link
    Just in case you weren't aware, you can actually click Parent on a comment to be brought to its parent comment, and then click [Back] on that parent comment to go right back to where you were in...

    Just in case you weren't aware, you can actually click Parent on a comment to be brought to its parent comment, and then click [Back] on that parent comment to go right back to where you were in the thread. Sure, it's a manual action, but it doesn't require any manual scrolling so it's super fast.

    5 votes
    1. [3]
      mrbig
      Link Parent
      Thanks! That is very good to know and will help me a lot, especially on the desktop. I'm not so sure about mobile. Still, I think the visual representation of this structure could be improved.

      Thanks!

      That is very good to know and will help me a lot, especially on the desktop. I'm not so sure about mobile.

      Still, I think the visual representation of this structure could be improved.

      2 votes
      1. [2]
        cfabbro
        Link Parent
        I actually find it's more useful on mobile than PC. But yeah, I do agree the comment layout could probably use some visual tweaking to make it easier to track deeply nested threads.

        I actually find it's more useful on mobile than PC. But yeah, I do agree the comment layout could probably use some visual tweaking to make it easier to track deeply nested threads.

        2 votes
        1. mrbig
          Link Parent
          Cool. I will test it.

          Cool. I will test it.

          1 vote
  3. Deimos
    Link
    You could do this in a user stylesheet through Stylus or a similar extension pretty easily. All comments have a data attribute with their depth, so you could do something like:...

    You could do this in a user stylesheet through Stylus or a similar extension pretty easily. All comments have a data attribute with their depth, so you could do something like:

    .comment[data-comment-depth="1"] > .comment-itself .comment-text {
    color: red;
}

.comment[data-comment-depth="2"] > .comment-itself .comment-text {
    color: green;
}

    And so on, for all the depths you want to support. The above CSS would make it so that top-level comments still have normal text color, replies to them have red text, and replies to those have green text.

    3 votes