mcview: dim wrapped lines

[egmont]

Nowadays I work with large log files.

I make my terminal quite wide, many of the lines fit in a line, but still many don't. Some span across maybe 5 or 10 lines, some are even larger. Actually the one that logs my Java classpath is 70kB (!) long, that is, occupying around 10 full screens.

If I disable wrapping, the timestamps are nicely aligned below each other, but I miss a lot of important content, have to scroll in two dimensions which is really cumbersome, and it's really hard to tell if a line is very long.

If I enable wrapping, I get to see all the content, but it becomes much harder to see where a new log record starts (especially after those extremely long lines).

I don't like the approach of Emacs and a couple of other tools that put a special symbol at the beginning or at the end of the line, as it even further increases clutter. My goal is not to be perfectly aware if it's a soft or a hard line wrap.

My goal is to reduce the clutter, and unconsciously have a feeling about where logical lines start. To one moment easily focus on all the content at once, and the next moment easily focus on logical lines (log records) and quicky jump to the next one with my eyes.

So I came up with this idea and a quick patch: Print the second and subsequent wrapped lines of a paragraph using a dimmer color. See the screenshot.

You can try my patch; right now it's only done for the gray* skins, but you can easily change any other skin.

F6 is unused in the viewer, it could toggle this mode as an improvement if you like the idea.

Opinions welcome! :)

[egmont]

Screenshot

[egmont]

Patch, v0