How to use

General concepts: Differences; The text editor's panes; Quick navigation; Comparison bar; Customization. Quick start Accelerator keys

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Differences

Visual Comparer is based on the line matching concept. The differences mapping mechanism consists in the usage of two panels, each of which displays one of the files compared.

Differences are visually specified using the concept color selection and virtual lines. Virtual lines are used by Visual Comparer to indicate the absence of lines. It is important to understand, that these blank spaces are in fact not present in the file and are intended to show the differences of files while matching.

Virtual lines are editable. If you enter a text into this area, Visual Comparer will insert the new text into the necessary place while saving the file. As it was mentioned above, the different lines are visually marked by a background color. Visual Comparer supports bookmarks as well. It allows fast navigating between the necessary parts of the compared files. All these features are shown below:

The text editor's panes

One of the main advantages of this program from all other known clones is its support of the fully-functional text editor. As in any other text editor, you can copy, delete, find and replace the text. If you make all these operations in one of the panels, Visual Comparer automatically updates the visual state of another one.

Some operations of looking through the text are specific. For example, if you insert some new lines into the right panel, new virtual lines will be added into the left panel . The text editor's pane consists of the input area and the information margin. The information about lines - numbers, edited or not, virtual or not etc. - is displayed in the margin.

The following operations with text panes are also possible: swap of panes and their vertical or horizontal layout.

Editor's panes support the context-sensitive menu with operations and commands frequently used. You also can customize the context-sensitive menu as you wish (see below Customization).

Quick navigation

The "Comparison Map" is used by Visual Comparer for easy navigation between the differences in files. It consists of area of differences and a scrollbar. Using "Comparison Map", you can move fast to any place of the files both with the help of the scrollbar and by mouse clicking the necessary place in the area of differences. You can dock the "Comparison Map" either to the left or to the right side of main window (see submenu "View" - "Comparison Map"). The scrollbar of "Comparison Map" is synchronized with the vertical scrollbars of the text editor. If you use the scrollbar of "Comparison Map" to scroll the text , you can switch off the vertical scrollbars of the text editor. You should use the "Setting" dialog (see check box "Show scroll bar(s) on the right side" of the property page "Editor").

Comparison Bar

"Comparison bar" is intended for choosing the files and their subsequent matching. It consists of two lists of choice where some names of recently opened files are stored. A separate list of choice is intended for its own text panel. It is necessary to select the required files from the lists of choice in order to match the files once again. If there are no required files in the lists you should use the dialog of files choice again and then click "Compare!".

Customization

Visual Comparer is a fully customizable program. You can place frequently used commands to the toolbars the way you like, and set the shortcuts for them if necessary. All this is possible due to the mechanism of customization.

Quick start

There are different ways to start Visual Comparer:

1. Start Visual Comparer and select the necessary files to compare using the following buttons on "Comparison Bar":  ,  . Press   to start comparison.

2. Another way to start Visual Comparer is to use the command line. Visual Comparer accepts as parameters the complete names of the first and second files to be compared.
Warning: if there are any spaces in the file name you need to give the file name in quotes. If you have specified only one file Visual Comparer will display the files choice dialog box to specify the second file.

3. You can run Visual Comparer from Diff Commander as well. For more information see external tools feature in Diff Commander.

Accelerator keys

While operating Visual Comparer you can use accelerator keys to make it more convenient. Here is the basic set of accelerator keys:

• Common:
  • Save first file - Ctrl+1;
  • Save second file - Ctrl+2;


• Editor:
  • Copy - Ctrl+C;
  • Copy as HTML text - Ctrl+Alt+C;
  • Copy as HTML - Ctrl+Alt+H;
  • Cut - Ctrl+X, Shift+Del;
  • Paste - Ctrl+V;
  • Undo - Alt+Backspace;
  • Redo - Ctrl+A;
  • Show whitespaces - Ctrl+Alt+T;
  • Show numbers of lines in margin - Ctrl+Alt+N;
  • Toggle bookmarks - Ctrl+F2;
  • Next bookmark - F2;
  • Previous bookmark - Shift+F2;
  • Clear all bookmarks - Ctrl+Shift+F2;


• Differences and synchronization navigation:
  • Next difference - Alt+Down;
  • Previous difference - Alt+Up;
  • Next edited block - Ctrl+Alt+Down;
  • Previous edited block - Ctrl+Alt+Up;
  • Difference block to the right - Alt+Right;
  • Difference block to the left - Alt+Left;
  • One line from difference block to the right - Ctrl+Alt+Right;
  • One line from difference block to the left - Ctrl+Alt+Left;


• "Comparison Bar":
  • Set focus to the first combo box in "Comparison Bar" - Alt+1;
  • Set focus to the second combo box in "Comparison Bar" - Alt+2;
  • Compare files selected in "Comparison Bar" - Alt+Enter;