Few suggestions

[[Yustas.NeO]]

First, I want to thank you for the excellent program! Best interface among the programs of comparison!
I wish you success in development!

1. Some dropdown list to change codepage in both files at ones.
2. New color highlighting Files/lines determined as manually ignoring and new filter Show manually ignoring only.
3. New commands: Go to next/prev different line (not to next different) and Copy to the left/right and go to the next(/prev?) different line.

It needs more comfort for work-just-with-mouse and work-just-with-keyboard.

1. Separate the Cursor and Selection. New command Select must work like Ctrl+Click and cursor's movement must not remove this selection. Like in the Total Commander. Select would be nice to set as Insert-key and as Middle-mouse-button.
2. Save commands: Save file on the left, Save file on the right, Save both files. Set as hotkeys.
3. Focus commands: Focus left side, Focus right side, Focus other side. Set as hotkeys.

[Michael Bulgrien]

• New color highlighting Files/lines determined as manually ignoring and new filter Show manually ignoring only.

I agree. Perhaps ignored lines in a text compare ought to be teal (i.e. the color of ignored files in a folder compare session when the ignore file filters button is enabled).

• New commands: Go to next/prev different line (not to next different) and Copy to the left/right and go to the next(/prev?) different line.

There already are Copy line to left/right commands. Open Tools -> Customize Commands... and find them in the list (they look like thin green arrows). From here you can add them to the toolbar and/or dropdown menu. You can also edit/change the keyboard shortcuts.

There also are commands for Next/Previous Difference instead of Difference Sections. They're not quite the same as Next/Previous Different Line since they will step through multiple differences in a line. If you want to go to the Next Different Line, however, you can press the <End> key to jump to the end of the current line before going to the Next Difference. Likewise, for the Previous Different Line, you can use the <Home> key to jump to the beginning of the current line before going to the Previous Difference. How does that work for you?

Regarding Copy to the left/right and go to the next(/prev?) different line, there could be no end to the combinations of functionalities desired by different users. Team Scooter would do well to introduce keyboard macros so that a user can string together existing commands in user-defined macros and assign keyboard shortcuts to execute those macros.

[Aaron]

Hello,

1. In the Session menu -> Session Settings, you can change the encoding override or format for both files at once.

2. Thanks to you and Michael for the suggestion. This one is already on our Customer Wishlist, and I've added your notes to that.

3. Please see Michael's notes. We do have several of these commands in the Tools menu -> Customize Commands (when within a Text Compare session), and many can be added to menus, toolbars, or have keyboard shortcuts assigned to them.

[Aaron]

Hello Michael,

What kind of command Macros would you be interested in creating? Some of them could be considered commands, and/or some of our current commands could be restructured as macros.

[[Yustas.NeO]]

there could be no end to the combinations of functionalities desired by different users. Team Scooter would do well to introduce keyboard macros so that a user can string together existing commands in user-defined macros and assign keyboard shortcuts to execute those macros.

I agree And I'll be happy to use macros, if they can be assign to hotkeys and buttons

1. In the Session menu -> Session Settings, you can change the encoding override or format for both files at once.

What if i'm comparing files not from the Sessions?
I mean dropdown-list on the toolbar like similar dropdown-list on the file panels. It would be much faster.

[Michael Bulgrien]

What kind of command Macros would you be interested in creating? Some of them could be considered commands, and/or some of our current commands could be restructured as macros.

Ideally, it would be nice to have a complete macro scripting language allowing users to record activity performed in the GUI, edit it as necessary, save then replay the script at a later time. This would allow users to repeat complex steps in a consistent and reliable manner. For example, a user might record doing a regular expression search for filenames in the left pane then copy the found line to the right pane. The resulting macro might contain something like this:

find left regex "\w:\\.*?\.\w{3}"
copy line right

The macro language could include statements/keywords to control program flow as well as support internal variables (for example, setting a %found% variable to true when the result of a find is successful and false when the search fails.) The user might then be able to edit the macro as follows:

find left regex "\w:\\.*?\.\w{3}"
while %found% do
begin
copy line right
find next
end

The macro language could contain commands to copy selected text, compare the contents of the clipboard to a text literal and branch macro execution based on the results, paste the contents of the clipboard, etc.

That being said, my suggestion earlier in this thread was not for a full-fledged recordable macro language, but a simple macro editor allowing users to script multiple keypresses into a single macro, give it a meaningful name, and assign a custom keypress shortcut to execute the macro on the fly. The following macro could be written, for example, to copy the current line to the right then locate the next different line as requested in the original post:

Key Shift+Ctrl+R
Key END
Key Shift+Ctrl+N

This would be meager but useful starting point to a much more powerful macro language. Team Scooter could add more and more commands to the macro language as the product matures eventually giving users the "ideal" recordable macro support described at the top of this post.

[Aaron]

Thanks for the suggestion, Michael. This would be a very useful addition, and I've added your notes to the wishlist. This would be a large project, and would certainly be a ways out before we could tackle adding interactive Macro support.

[Aaron]

What if i'm comparing files not from the Sessions?
I mean dropdown-list on the toolbar like similar dropdown-list on the file panels. It would be much faster.

In BC3, everything is a session (whether it is saved or not). The file encodings are on the toolbar, but BC3 supports individually setting them per pane. You can quickly switch one then the other, or switch them both in the Session Settings dialog.

Does this work for you? If you are having trouble with some specific file encoding detection, could you email a pair of them to [email protected] ? Please also include a link back to this forum post.