word wrap / horizontal scrolling

[Michael Bulgrien]

May I suggest that a shorter-term solution prior to a full-fledged implementation of word wrap might be to create a "Wrapped Details" pane to swap out with the regular "Text Details" pane that takes just the current pair of lines and displays them (with difference coloring in place) wrapped to match the width of the pane.

[Aaron]

Chrisjj is correct in that the characters per line limit affects the comparison (example: extra text is at the front of a line, and the limit is hit splitting it, text on different lines would then not compare.)

Word Wrap is on our Customer Wishlist with several customer requests, notes, and scenarios. It is something we are aware of but we are currently in the middle of several other large projects and it would require more investigation before we could tackle it. If there are any example files you would like to pass on, please feel free to post them here or email them to us at support@scootersoftware.com. If you email us, please include a link back to this forum post for reference.

[chrisjj]

Since a "characters per line limit" functions is already implemented it seems to me that it shouldn't be a big deal to implement a button that toggles the value of this function. But perhaps I'm missing something..

"characters per line limit" causes line splits that affect the comparison result, so cannot be used to simply split the lines for better viewing.

[HjP]

Hi,

thanks for your answer. Assigning a Hotkey for Next Difference is not exactly what I was looking for. Word wrapping would allow for an at-first-glance overview of differences ant their context in text documents. Since a "characters per line limit" functions is already implemented it seems to me that it shouldn't be a big deal to implement a button that toggles the value of this function. But perhaps I'm missing something..
What do you think about my second suggestion (horizontal scrolling with Shift+mouse wheel)?
Thanks,
HjP

[Aaron]

Hello,

Thanks for the suggestion. Word wrap is something that is on our Customer Wishlist. Our wishlist is not currently scheduled development, but a place our developers go to for ideas for future features or enhancements.

One feature that I think may help is our Next Difference command. Launch the Text Compare, and go to the Tools menu -> Customize Commands. Here, search for Next Diff. We have a few variations. The default on the Toolbar is Next Difference Section, but you can assign a Hotkey for Next Difference, which will hop to the exact spot of the difference. Does this help?

Please let us know if you have any questions.

[HjP]

Hi,

when comparing two text documents, the lines often are longer than the width of the display panes. Hence, the difference between two lines often hides beyond the visible end of the line and one is forced to do horizontal scrolling. This is annoying.
As a relief I would suggest the following:
1. Enable horizontal scrolling by using shift plus mouse wheel.
2. Enable word wrapping. After doing some searching, I found the option "tools/file formats/conversion/characters per line limit". But this is much too inconvenient to access. My proposal would be to create a toolbar button "word wrap" which toggles this option between 4096 and the currend width of the display panes.

Thanks,
HjP