Help the compare plugin by aligning some lines
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Hello,
I use the compare plugin for ASCII files, but with my files it happens often, that the plugin does not recognice the correct alignment. So i would like to give the plugin some hint that some lines in the two files belong together…
Is such a feature available in the compare plugin?
maybe I just overlooked this …
best regardsHermann
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The same problem is the bane of all difference/compare utilities. I have never seen any that allow you to define points as “this is definitely the same point”.
The Compare Plugin is being deprecated and no longer supported – the author of the replacement “ComparePlus” is hoping to have a release in the next month … but you could put in a feature request for that plugin . (But if it were an easy task, I would think that the long history of diff/compare utilities would have included that feature more often, so I don’t know if it’s implementable or not.)
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@PeterJones
thanks for your answer!!!
I have heard, that beyond compare does have this feature … guess I need to pay for it …Hermann
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Hello @Hermann-Ruckerbauer ,
Beyond Compare has the feature to add manual synchronization points but it is commercial product.
I thought about adding such functionality to ComparePlus but instead implemented
Selections Comparewhich is more generic and can be used in your case. For example if you reach a point where you want to set sync point select all the lines from that point to the end of the file (in each of the files that need sync point) and thenCompare Selections.ComparePlus will be out in a month or less and you’ll be able to get it in new Notepad++ versions (after 8.4.4) through Plugins Admin.
BR
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@PeterJones said in Help the compare plugin by aligning some lines:
The same problem is the bane of all difference/compare utilities. I have never seen any that allow you to define points as “this is definitely the same point”.
KDiff3 supports “Manually Aligning lines” for multiple lines at the same time.
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@pnedev
sounds great!
I see one disadvantage:
Sometimes I have huge files and selecting from one point to the end might be not as simple as it sounds. So I would prefer if i just could set multiple “Align” markers … this sounds a bit simpler for me …
If I have two align markers set (in bothe files), the tool would know, that the section inbetween is the one that it needs to compare.With these big files that have some repetitive content (similar, but not the same) it will be difficult to keep the overview on the different sections if I only can select from one point to the end of the file.
But in any case I will take a close look to ComparePlus.
Best regards
Hermann
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@astewart77
this is great … thanks a lot!
it looks like I can set several alignment points as I mentioned in the answer regarding the ComplarePlus.
what i don not like / did not find out so far:- after setting an alignemenpoint it takes several seconds until KDIF3 caluculates the width of the scrollbar.
- after setting an alignement point the tool sets my text to an “arbitrary” (?) location in the file and I need to search where I was.
- I can not distinguish between alignment points along the file (I would like to see e. g. a number or a different color).
- I would like to have the option to jump to the next alignment point in the navigation.
I know this is not the right place to give this feedback to this tool, but maybe pnedev takes it to make a better solution in his plugin ;-)
Hermann
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Yes, selecting can be cumbersome in some cases indeed.
You can more easily select everything till the end of the file by positioning the caret in the beginning of the line from where the selection should start and pressingShift+CTRL+Endbuttons.
And comparing selections is not exactly adding synchronization points. Maybe some day in the future I’ll consider adding such functionality in ComparePlus but I can’t promise that because I hardly find spare time.BR
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@Hermann-Ruckerbauer said in Help the compare plugin by aligning some lines:
- I can not distinguish between alignment points along the file (I would like to see e. g. a number or a different color).
- I would like to have the option to jump to the next alignment point in the navigation.
There should be an orange (default color) half width marker in the left marker margin at each point. No way to navigate alignments per se, but each one will most likely create a new diff block with the point as first/last line and you can navigate diffs.
