On Rendering Diffs • Hacker News Board

Re: On Rendering Diffs

#71

Post by cvince » Sun, May 31, 2026, 12:14 AM UTC

amadeus wrote: post #20

cvince wrote: post #18

Whatever happened to all the pretext hype? I feel like that would be perfect for rendering huge diffs.

Yes and no. It would help to improve things a bit when it comes the measure/reconciliation phase (unclear to say how much). However we've already done a pretty good job around batching writes vs reads. However passing a million lines of code through pretext is unlikely to be very efficient, so a lot of the work around estimation is still very important. That said, while I don't want to make pretext a direct dependenc…

I think it's amazing how deep you can go in something as simple as rendering diffs, and I'm really grateful you shared that writeup (in fact I've been following you loosely since the Kiip days as a then aspiring designer+developer type).

I've always been curious how products like ag-grid are able to allow you to lazy-load 10,000,000+ rows in a table without the blanking you described, and I imagine this type of method describes how it can be done.

Re: On Rendering Diffs

#72

Post by cvince » Sun, May 31, 2026, 12:15 AM UTC

taejavu wrote: post #21

cvince wrote: post #18

Whatever happened to all the pretext hype? I feel like that would be perfect for rendering huge diffs.

Can you select and copy text with pretext?

Of course you can. It doesn't replace the dom, just changes how it's calculated. https://chenglou.me/pretext/dynamic-layout/

Re: On Rendering Diffs

#73

Post by adrian_b » Sun, May 31, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

nextaccountic wrote: post #67

chrismorgan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised to see such a reaction to a left-aligned content column. I’d have said it was pretty common, though probably not as common as it used to be. If I were to pick one problem with the presentation, it would rather be the font-size (12px is unequivocally too small), or the use of monospace (simply unsuitable for body text). And incidentally, HN suffers from two of these three problems.

> I’m surprised to see such a reaction to a left-aligned content column. I’d have said it was pretty common, though probably not as common as it used to be. When it was common, columns weren't so thin I think

Left aligned content was much less of a problem on the old displays with a 4:3 aspect.

Nowadays, with wide displays, the browser windows may also be wide, especially when using a lot of open tabs, and left aligned content becomes much more annoying when it is thrown far away from your center of vision.