Bug#838260: diffoscope: Reduce noise from offsets deltas in readelf(1) diffs

[Daniel Shahaf]

Chris Lamb wrote on Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 20:58:29 +0100:
> Daniel Shahaf wrote:
> 
> > Example output:
> 
> Alas I'm not very learned in ELF, so I will trust the specifics are fine,
> but just to check:
> 

I'm not too familiar with ELF either.  I know a little about which
C variables live in which section, e.g., .rodata is storage for string
literals.

> >     <at the end>
> >     .rodata#1 is 0xA70
> >     .rodata#2 is 0xA80
> 
> … would be displayed (when different, of course!) as *something* like:
> 
>  -     .rodata#1 is 0xA70
>  +     .rodata#1 is 0xA71

Yes.

> > The actual hex values could be displayed as a tooltip on the 'lea' line,
> > or appended to that line as a '# comment'
> 
> So, tooltips are not only HTML-specific that would also hide data, particularly
> for a) users who do not even know they need to run their mouse over something,
> b) users who generally drive their browser via a keyboard (probably more common
> for users of diffoscope!) and c) users with accessibility requirements.

I was thinking of something like the HTML <acronym> tag.  In my browser,
<acronym title="tooltip">foo</acronym> renders «foo» with a dotted underline
whose raison d'être is your concern (a).  I assume the user agents of
people in categories (b) and (c) have similar solutions.

In any case, displaying the values in a comment is probably better since
it makes the information available without a user action.  (As I said in
my last email, the comment should be exempted from being diffed.)