GitHub Adds Support For Diffing 3D Files 29
An anonymous reader writes "A few months after releasing support for viewing models in .STL format, GitHub just added support for viewing changes to .STL formatted 3D models directly in the browser. 'How does this work? We take both versions of the model, and using binary space partitioning, we compute the added, removed, and unchanged parts. This is done using csgtool, a C library paired with a Ruby gem via FFI. These pieces are cached and displayed by the 3D viewer we already have, though we color them differently and play with their transparency to help illustrate the changes.'"
And Yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would you use github when you could setup your own git master?
Re:And Yet... (Score:4, Informative)
This is git, not SVN.
I have the complete and fully functioning repo on my dev machine so GitHub can go boom right now and I would not really care.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That and no way to download a change set as a simple unified diff. Sometimes don't want to clone a huge project,especially when short of bandwidth.
Re:And Yet... (Score:4, Informative)
You certainly can!
Visit your repo page +"/compare" to setup the revisions you want to diff.
Or just construct the url:
https://github.com/gunn/ember.js/compare/emberjs:8446b121d8c635ebf...ember-libraries.diff [github.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks, I'll change my complaint to "it is non-obvious how to create a diff from a change set"
Re: (Score:2)
Has anyone ever discovered that feature without someone else telling them about it? I'm guessing the answer is no.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You certainly can!
Visit your repo page +"/compare" to setup the revisions you want to diff.
Or just construct the url:
https://github.com/gunn/ember.js/compare/emberjs:8446b121d8c635ebf...ember-libraries.diff [github.com]
In other words, using GitHub is every bit as transparent and consistent as the git command line! It's a feature...
Re: (Score:1)
Still no side-by-side diff for plain old text files.
Hey now, be fair. It's a lot harder to write a 7 line perl script to run 'diff' and output it to a web browser than to write a complex algorithm to show changes to a 3D model. I mean, have you ever tried coding in Perl? It's like rocket science and stuf--*chokes*
Gaaaakk. Sorry, overdid the snark again. Need to go drink some water to wash out the taste now...
Re: (Score:2)
And your comment was funny until "until".
offline (Score:2)
Real question : Is the tool that crates these diffs open source?
It'd be pretty lame to want to diff a couple revisions but need to push the changes to the public to see the diff.
Re: (Score:1)
Yep, it's https://github.com/sshirokov/csgtool
Re:Future filetypes? (Score:5, Informative)
Another cool thing would be image diff viewing. Shouldn't be too hard to do some fancy adjust transparency of two images overlapping eachother with a slider to see the diffs.
Image diffing is already a thing: https://github.com/blog/817-behold-image-view-modes
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure how .blend would work unless you disable compression. I don't know enough about other formats to say anything about them though (isn't .obj just point cloud data with connections?)
Re: (Score:2)
For Excel diffs, a traditional diff program with a conversion shim is useful.
I've been a long time user of Beyond Compare 3 which supports pre and post diff / merge transform steps ; not OSS or FreeBeer but very capable and well worth the pro / cross platform license cost IMHO.