Matt Neuburg wrote:

So what about the little arrow button at the bottom that opens the list of changed files and lets you show the diff as a separate window? m.

I've just received beta 6 (previously on beta 1), and it has changed a bit more. The drop-down to check/uncheck all has reappeared at the bottom of the Commit window: good change back to the previous UI - it was a bit hidden in the right-click menu on the grid. (Thanks to Michael Sheets for pointing that out to me).

The little arrow just hides and shows the grid. The cog drop-down only offers check/uncheck all. Maybe I'm missing something? Each file has a Diff button, but that opens the diff just for that file. If I've got lots of changes that's also a bit tiresome.

Ronald Wampler wrote:

See http://lists.macromates.com/textmate-dev/2014-July/014989.html and https://github.com/textmate/textmate/pull/1249 for previous discussions.

Thanks for the pointers; they were helpful in understanding the aim of the changes. I see that the individual diffs are opened in a separate window but tied to the project, which makes sense. Following that idea, I guess what I would like to see is an option to open all of the diffs in one tab on that, i.e. the same as Command-Shift-A, Command-Y, "Diff with working copy (BASE)" and double-click the tab, which is my current dance that I have to remember to do before opening the Commit pane. Perhaps another option in the cog drop-down along with check/uncheck all?

I know that the "Previous Commit" messages are retained, which is a very useful feature that I've used for a long time. Opening and closing the commit pane to write a bit of a message in between reviewing code is still a bit tedious.

I saw also that Allan commented in the pull request:

I’ve noticed that sometimes I need to include stuff from my source in the commit message, in which case I need to abort the commit (in order to get to the source), a downside of the sheet I hadn’t considered. But I’ll give it some more time, as it might not be that big of an issue in the long run.

This is basically the fundamental problem I am getting at. As I wrote above, the new pane in beta 6 is much better than it was in beta 1, and it could be improved further with an 'open all diffs' button, but in the end the modality means you cannot access the tabs. On the other hand, I also see Ronald's original point that you can end up with several Commit windows with the old UI. It happened to me occasionally too. Maybe we just need a preference setting to have it either way?

Allan Odgaard wrote:

We already use an extenral window when showing uncommitted changes for Git which has the nice feature that line numbers (in that display) link back to the original documents. Additionally once TM supports re-running commands on changes, such output windows can be made ?live?.

Sorry Allan, I don't use Git so I don't understand what the links and 'live' windows means for the SVN Commit window, but it *sounds* good! :-)

Thanks all for your input and hard work.

Cheers, Jonathan.