"Support for 3-way merges in the "External" format." in new Beta 4.1 ?

[sumangalam]

Dear Sir,

Can you please guide how to use "Added support for 3-way merges in the "External" format." in new Beta 4.1

Frankly, I have been feeling that "External" format may have BIG potential, but could never figure out how to use it.


With Regards

Sanjiv Bansal

[Aaron]

Hello,

In the Tools menu -> File Formats dialog, you can create new formats for different extension types in addition to those we include by default. These can open specific files in specific viewers, such as a new type of text file in the Text Compare with specific grammar rules. Or a specific text file extension in the Table Compare with specific column definitions.

In addition, we also have an External Format, which when activated will call out to a provided command line. This can be used to launch your own custom viewers if you have another application you wish to use to perform the diff or merge. The View command line is what would be launched if you double click to view a file; the Quick Compare is what is used if a quick compare scan is performed on the file pair.

BC 4.1 also adds support for using these from our Folder Merge session, not just the Folder Compare, so you can now double click a file in the Folder Merge and have it launch a specific command line for viewing the merge.

This is in contrast to using an External Conversion command line, which can be part of a specific internal Viewer. For example, the PDF documents File Format will take the PDF, pass it to PDF2Text to perform the conversion, and then we open the temporary text output in the Text Compare.

External Conversions use a command line to convert the file and then open it in one of our Viewers. External Formats expect for an independent viewer to be provided.