Word wrap in text-compare

[Aaron]

Hello,

Different tools are frequently changing or enhancing their feature sets, but there's a decent list of tools here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...mparison_tools

[intersol]

I being using BeyondCompare for 10+ years and did a lot of marketing around me but recently I was forced to have to work with files that have very long form and I also have a 13" monitor on my MBP....

Shortly using BC become a big PITA and failure to implement a fix for this long standing critical issue makes me doubt my "brand-commitment".

The answer I was hopping for is that, even if this is a technical challenge, there is someone working on it and that there is a way to enable a preview mode for this option for those wanting to test unreliable code.

[Aaron]

Wrapping the display is something we want to tackle, but is not a small issue to design or implement. We don't have any kind of preview mode or debug build that has this feature (partial or buggy).

One thing that helps is the Next Difference (Ctrl+Shift+N) command, which navigates horizontally within a line. The general strategy is to configure BC4's comparison criteria, and then use the filters and commands to navigate between sections of text or the text itself.

[arkid]

So I'm another user that has found this forum thread. Whilst I understand this may be some work to do it really is just odd its not a feature of a program like this. Also dealing with long text strings spat out by code that are not very readable unless I can wrap.

Wrapping the display is something we want to tackle, but is not a small issue to design or implement. We don't have any kind of preview mode or debug build that has this feature (partial or buggy).

One thing that helps is the Next Difference (Ctrl+Shift+N) command, which navigates horizontally within a line. The general strategy is to configure BC4's comparison criteria, and then use the filters and commands to navigate between sections of text or the text itself.

[bay_baobab]

I have been a big fan of BC but the lacking of this particular feature really grinds my gears. It is really frustrating to horizontally scroll and look at the differences.

I am using a different tool just for this purpose. It is hard to switch back and forth between tools, but it is not harder than horizontally scrolling.

[mahimahi]

This really is almost a deal-breaker, especially as it has apparently been on your todolist since at least since 2008,... as in 10 years ago!

[crashnburn]

I have been a big fan of BC but the lacking of this particular feature really grinds my gears. It is really frustrating to horizontally scroll and look at the differences.

I am using a different tool just for this purpose. It is hard to switch back and forth between tools, but it is not harder than horizontally scrolling.

What tool are you using for this? Please do share. Thanks.

[Mikexx]

What tool are you using for this? Please do share. Thanks.

I don't think there is one, but then most tools I have used for comparing text files are free.

Such a feature could further differentiate a paid for tool vs free.

As you say this has been a promised feature for years and given the unique position it would place Beyond Compare I'm surprised this feature hasn't been implemented.

[pbrown]

This has been one of the features that I've been wanting for quite some time. I frequently edit text documents and reflow paragraphs when I add or remove content. Having a "conversion" tool that reflows paragraphs prior to conversion doesn't really help when you add/remove text at the beginning of the paragraph -- such changes will affect the reflowing of every line.

GNU Emacs's "ediff" utility actually does this quite nicely. Let's say I have two files that look like:

This is a test of the
emergency broadcasting
system.

and

This is an exciting test
of the emergency
broadcasting system.

When I compare these in "ediff", it initially has a diff section fully highlighting both paragraphs. But if you type "*", it enables a "refine" mode. All lines of both paragraphs are displayed as a diff section, but only the text that actually changed is highlighted with a brighter background. That's "a" on the first line of the first example and "an exciting" on the first line of the second. The rest of the text is not highlighted, even though several words changed lines. BC4 highlights more words on these lines.

[Aaron]

Thanks for the example and feedback.

[bluelovers]

many txt editor or diff tool can have Word wrap
don't know why bc can't have this

[timmydog]

What tool are you using for this? Please do share. Thanks.

meld (free, open source) on Linux does this. I'm a bit annoyed, because I recently upgraded from regular BC to the Pro version to get the 3-way merge facility and I've found that I prefer meld because it does word-wrap.

Don't get me wrong, I think that BC is great - things like the image compare, etc. are brilliant, but to have spent the money on the upgrade to find that word-wrap is the killer feature in meld kind of sucks. :-(

Tim

[timmydog]

This inserted line break is actual data and is not just for display. If you save the file, it will save with these line breaks inserted.

I can't have my merge tool insert line-breaks in files because it might break the code, so cannot use this as a workaround.

[Aaron]

Hello,

One quick thing to point out: the line breaks presented in the display when lines exceed the Character line limit are removed during the Save. The output should be in the original format and not break any code.

This is not ideal compared to a full line wrapping solution, since the internal line breaks effect the comparison, but any edit or merge output should be presented back in the original structuring. A displayed line wrap is something we would like to tackle, but is a very large project.

A side note is that the Characters per line limit can also be increased to try and avoid these breaks entirely, in the Tools menu -> File Formats, select your specific format, and in the Conversion tab increase the limit of characters allowed per line (default 4096).

[andycoggins]

I joined Scootersoftware simply to say how much I like this product. I've used it for about 5 or 6 years now. The lack of Viewer Word Wrap bugs me too, but after spending about 3 hours studying and trying everyone's solutions posted in this Forum, I've hit on the 2 that work best for me.

A lot of what I have to do is compare 2 paragraphs, so I open a blank BC4 Text Compare window, and paste into the Left and Right panes. BC4 automatically compares them, but they are presented on one long line.

By creating an HTML Report (Session->Text Compare Report, select Side-by-side, All, HTML, Use color stylesheet (embedded), Allow Word Wrapping, then Click View in Browser) and it automatically opens a very readable side-by-side, text-wrapped report so I can quickly see the differences - all without me having to create separate Left and Right text files. If the side-by-side doesn't work for you, then the Interleaved Report Layout shows an over-and-under view.

You can also get a line truncated view in the BC4 viewer panes that approximates a line wrap, but you have to create a dummy File Format first (and you need a L & R file on disk). (Tools->File Formats, then hit the + sign (New – based on “Everything Else”), changed the Char Limit to 115 (or whatever), I left the General->Mask blank (so it wouldn't truncate any file I happened to open later), then “Save As” and named it Text-NoFile-115charWide).

Then, I opened the Left and Right text files using the little File Open icon to the right of the FileName box (at this point, each still presented as one long line). Then I hit the little arrow next to the Format button with the gear icon on the main toolbar, selected “Text-NoFile-115CharWide”, and the text wrapped appropriately.

With these 2 techniques, I can get by with most things. But I eagerly await Word Wrap View too. For it to be taking this long, to implement Word Wrap sounds like Scooter must change the core of how they compare text. Maybe the compare function is tightly coupled with the viewer. Maybe they could create a smaller side-by-side word wrap view to satisfy 95% of the cases, something that would do the gigantic, high-speed comparison in the background with an option to show the first couple of thousand lines in wrapped view or something.

Anyhow, really enjoy the product.