Compare Text With Florencesoft TextDiff

Compare and Find Differences Between Text Files

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v1.0.0.1 for PC Download Trial

Platforms: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10

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How do you compare two text files on Windows? Do you load them side by side and painstakingly review them line by line? Skyrocket your productivity with today’s discount software promotion, Florencesoft TextDiff!

Florencesoft TextDiff lets you report the differences between two text files, ideal for source code review as well as article and report writing. You can also compare the contents of two folders to identify and remove duplicates. You can view a single window showing all text changes or side-by-side windows showing deleted text and new text.

Florencesoft TextDiff is highly flexible, letting you paste text directly into the application or by using Drag & Drop to move files into the interface. Even if you move a paragraph within a document, Florencesoft TextDiff can identify deleted and new words. Plus, you can perform comparisons at the line/paragraph, word, and character level.

Please note folks: Florencesoft TextDiff reports differences, but has no support for the editing or merging of reported changes.

Review Written by Constantin Florea

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Egon User Hello,
Your assertion re the inability of very-well-known differ tools to identify text switches is spot-on (e.g. the "renowned" program "Beyond Compare" is unusable for this quite common task, and its developers, contacted by numerous (otherwise quite satisfied) users on this matter even 10, 12, 15 years ago, made some promises, nothing else.

Thus, even for paying users of such a program (I'm in this case myself), your differ tool is of the highest interest, even (for the time being only, hopefully?) without the possibility to edit, on one side at least: for practical purposes, this would suffice, perhaps you could a very basic editor for the text file in the right pane?

In order to avoid unwanted destruction of the "target file", the very first "refresh" command in each session (= load of file a and file b) would automatically create a renamed backup file of file b, for further "refreshs" within the same session, there should be a "simple refresh" (no further backups), and a "special refresh" command, which would then create another backup copy of file b, either overwriting the very last one (but NOT the very first backup copy of that session), or doing another (numbered) one (by option and/or dialogue). (Numbering of the very first (the automatic) one: fileb_1 (next sessions: fileb_2, fileb_3...), numbering of the other back-ups: fileb_1_1, fileb_1_2 (...) fileb_3_8, etc.)

In the meanwhile, I have a question (trialling would take quite some time, whilst you could answer from your knowledge of the program): In your screenshot, you demonstrate the tool's special ability with single paragraphs, i.e. with technical editor "lines"; what about compounds of several such paragraphs in a row? (Leaving out minor differences within such compounds in my question: I'm very well aware that there are limits to such further-down text analysis, possibly except for AI or then very elaborate traditional programming. Hence simply:)

Will the program (even currently, or rather soon then?) correctly detect shuffled compounds of "several paragraphs in a row" (provided they are in the same order, within)? And, just another suggestion, could you think about some optional "special formatting (e.g. darker blue instead of light blue) to hold them together" then, within ("target") pane b? (In its current shape, I suppose all those switched "lines"/paragraphs are correctly formatted light-blue (as in the screenshot), but without any indication in the "target pane" (which should always be pane b, if you try to make it "perfect" in both panes, it just can never be done) re their possible respective different (!) source positions in pane a?

Also, just blanks or blank lines ("empty paragraphs" in such compounds) should not make a difference in the comparison, at least upon option, whilst on the other hand, very minor character differences would show (and thus also "break" such compounds), since they might be typos in just one of the files - this detail shows, btw, that in the long range, editing should be made possible in both panes, but, with editing in the the left, the "source pane a" then needing a "complete refresh" (save and reload of both files) if it's anything more than just some editing within (!) a line (i.e. no line shuffling, and possibly no (non-blank) new lines either allowed in the "source file", without such a "complete refresh" then) - otherwise, the (very welcome) sophistication of the comparison code would quickly become conceptually impossible.

Btw., I think that the relative absence of available "shuffle differs" can at least partly be explained by developers trying to make "full editing" possible on both sides (i.e. within both files, as is the standard in such programs indeed), and then, with shuffling, they quickly become aware that the "necessary" code then amounts to heights they simply cannot manage anymore.

Thus, your differ here, devised from scratch, should very quickly stand out from the lot if in your coding efforts, you concentrate on a clear distinction between "source (a)" and "target (b)", and don't allow any editing which would complicate the code but within the "target pane" only, any such editing in the "source pane" requiring a "full refresh", i.e. their non-taking into account in "live processing" (but reload and new analysis).

Jun 9 2020 at 3:54am Copy Link

bvssunnydale Would there be any way to see, specifically, what was deleted (I'm thinking via strike-though)? Thanks very much.

Jun 9 2020 at 6:49am Copy Link

DiffEngineX LLC Yes, there is.

Hit the Colors button on the main part of the user interface.

At the top of the dialog box, you will see a checkbox with the label

"Use strike-through to aid identification of original text".

Simply make sure this check box is unchecked.

This will enable you to see the deleted text more easily.

You may also want to uncheck the other box for underlined text.

I find looking at text easier, if I change the background text to black and select a brighter shade of red, green, blue and gray for the other colours. Looking at a bright white background can be tiring on the eyes.

DiffEngineX LLC - Jun 9 2020 at 6:59am Copy Link

DiffEngineX LLC In reply to "Egon User", Florencesoft TextDiff is entirely systematic with regards to detecting text moved up and down in a document.

A paragraph can have modifications and then be moved about and the moved text will still be spotted.

Several paragraphs, with some modifications, can be moved about and all of them will be coloured grey (moved down) or blue (moved up).

To make sure all moves are spotted, make sure that "Whole Word" is selected rather than "Whole Paragraph/Line" on the Options dialog.

Obviously make sure "Actively look for moved regions" is still checked.

There is a combo box labelled "Minimum adjacent words (or characters) for each move".

This is an important setting. If it is set at too low a number, it will mark every single little word or character as moved. If you set it too high, it will not detect moves.

Its default setting is 5 words. You might want to increase is to 10, 15, 20 or even 30, depending on the balance between spotting large amounts of moved text and ignoring trivial movements.

If you don't want to install the software on Windows practically the same functionality is available on our website https://www.diff-text.com/

However the website does not have all the functionality of our Windows desktop software available at a discount from this website for a limited time.

DiffEngineX LLC - Jun 9 2020 at 9:25am Copy Link

Egon User Wow, this is much more elaborate already than I had assumed, from the low version number 1001! So it's just the missing edit functionality which might be a ( /an intermediary) deal breaker for some, and as said, this should be quite easy to implement if you do it just one-sided, which, let alone the technical coding aspects, would also make sense from the use case perspective: in most cases, there would be a "reference" (/ "original", "previous") file, and a "changed one" (also in groups of "consecutive" files), so the use of the (technical, not desirable) possibility to make "real" changes (except for some typos perhaps) on both sides would quickly obfuscate the user's editing task anyway, from the user's own perspective.

So, when do you intend to implement (limited) editing? Quite soon?

As it is currently, I think I could edit on a 2- (or big-) screen setup, in an external editor (in which I load the "target" version concurrently), but there would not just be a lot of searching of the strings identified (in the "target" differ pane) to be edited (since there will of course no automatic synced display with the external editor) but also quick de-sync between that pane and the external editor (i.e. the real current state of the "target" file), which puts a strain on the user's memory and/or will quickly cause editing errors, even though frequent new manual loading of the "target" file into the differ will lessen these risks.

The same problem, and the same solution (!), would arise for comparing two non-plain text text bodies: Creating, by the export function of the original application, text-only versions, loading these into the differ, identifying what's to do in its "target" pane, make the changes in the original file (displayed concurrently in its original application), then, whenever necessary, do a new export, load the export file into the differ, and so on.

That's cumbersome, but it's the best (decently-priced) solution you'll get for such a task (and which is clearly way above what you'd get with "Beyond Compare" et al. there), with non-plain text files to compare, and it's worthwhile noting that this possibility is even available today, with the introduction of editing within the differ not making any difference here.

Thus, my hoping for the introduction of "inline" editing as soon as possible notwithstanding, I'm a happy buyer even now (as having bought your Excel differ here some days ago).

Jun 12 2020 at 4:08am Copy Link

DiffEngineX LLC We have made a note of your comments and they have been helpful, along with the comments from the last sale here. It is very helpful to know what people want, especially given that there are so many text compare tools availble on the Internet. We didn't want to implement functionality with no demand.

As regards timescales and functionality, it is best to email us using the Contacts page on our website.

DiffEngineX LLC - Jun 12 2020 at 8:17am Copy Link

Brenda Adams I currently use a program called CompareIt. It has some editing abilities for both the Before and the After (I call them).

The idea for my use (and I have many friends who use it for same reason) is: for a certain recipe software users have created a tool that preps plain text layouts of recipes, readying them for user import into their recipe software. The user-made software makes some good changes, making corrections (even spelling) and such and adds 'tags' regarding placement of text but sometimes the program OR the user have made mistakes and so a comparison program comes in very handy to see what text was the starting point (the Before) and what the software has modified (seen in the After). User then edits the After, saves, and the software then does further prepping and imports the batch (or single) into our recipe software program, done, finished, perfect. :)

Always looking for a great comparison program that will work even better for us. Yours looks promising, but we sure need edit ability. :)

Jun 12 2020 at 1:51pm Copy Link

Mark Krieger Are you planning to add an ini-compare function?

There used to be the inicompare.io website, but that disappeared.

It would need to show sections added/deleted and within each section the settings could move around, so it is hard for regular comparison programs to find actual differences. Especially also if sections move around.
But with your paragraph move detection you may have a better starting point than they do?

Jun 13 2020 at 12:31pm Copy Link

DiffEngineX LLC In reply to Mark Krieger, we offer a trial software of our software at

https://compare-text-file...loads.html

Plus some of the software is duplicated at https://www.diff-text.com/

You may want to give it a go to see how it does as it is.

Look on the Options Dialog, switch between comparing "Whole Paragraph/Line" and "Whole Word" and use the one that gives the best results.

Certainly if you compare at the level of Whole Lines and ignore blue (moved up) and grey (moved down) lines, you will end up just seeing what has been changed.

Also try changing to "Don't show any identical paragraphs" on the main part of the user interface and then you will really only see the changes in the .ini file.

DiffEngineX LLC - Jun 13 2020 at 1:23pm Copy Link

DiffEngineX LLC In reply to "Brenda Adams", thanks for your comment. It is good to know what features are needed, especially because there are a vast number of compare text utilities around and we don't want to implement stuff that is not in demand.

DiffEngineX LLC - Jun 13 2020 at 1:26pm Copy Link

Brenda Adams I would like option to enlarge font. Thanks.

Jun 14 2020 at 4:44am Copy Link

DiffEngineX LLC In reply to Brenda Adams, to enlarge the font use

Ctrl +
i.e. press the + button and the Ctrl button at the same time.

To reduce the font size, use Ctrl -

To go back to the default font size, using Ctrl 0 (that is the numeric zero 0, not the letter o)

Also look on the Colors dialog, if you want to turn off underlining and strike-through of text, which can get in the way of seeing what is going on.

I recommend also changing the background colour to black and changing the colours for red, blue, green and gray into more brighter equivalents.

To me the most useful feature is
"Don't show identical, unmoved paragraphs"
and
"Don't show any identical paragraphs"

With these on, you only see the differences.

DiffEngineX LLC - Jun 14 2020 at 5:31am Copy Link