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The problem with text compare tools - similar, in database compare tools

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David.P:
Any news on this? There still doesn't seem to be any viable tool that supports text block movement recognition -- apart from wcopyfind (which hovewer has a rather terrible output view).

ExamDiff supposedly can recognize moved text, but I find it's output confusing and what's more, it doesn't seem to allow simple text editing inside the comparison window which is a must for me.

Other tools that I tried and that don't recognize move text are Meld (otherwise beautiful), Diffuse, Araxis Merge and Code Compare.

WinMerge supposedly also should recognize moved blocks, however I can't get it to work.

If anyone is aware of another comparison/merge tool that can do moved block recognition, please add it to this thread!

Shades:
The not free version of ExamDiff Pro will let you edit files directly. It also allows you to configure how "fine-grained" its output is. You can even adjust the colors it uses for this.

The only other compare tool I have experience with is 'Beyond Compare', which is on par with Examdiff Pro regarding configuration (the versions I have from both programs are). Not sure about Beyond Compare's ability to recognize moved text blocks. All I know is that Mouser is a very(!) big fan of Beyond Compare.

tomos:
FWIW there is a post about the topic here (dc link: scroll down to section "II" for some suggestions/links).
He does talk about Beyond Compare's capabilities re moved text in that, or maybe the previous post but I found it pretty hard to follow on a quick read - I dont *think* it has it (they are long and winding posts).

David.P:
Thanks guys. While I'm not sure what the rant over there exactly is about  :) I found that Beyond Compare obviously still does not support detection of moved text blocks.

With ExamDiff Pro, there is the problem that if you enable word wrapping (which I absolutely need to be active), you can't edit the file within ExamDiff Pro  :tellme:

Two tools from the list over in that other thread, SemanticMerge and PerforceMerge, so far look very promising. However, I'm not sure whether their method of "semantically" detecting moved text blocks will work for "normal" text (e.g. like letters, books, essays etc.).

While not offering a side by side view, the wikEd diff tool that seems to be powering the Wikipedia versioning engine, looks extremely powerful and promising. It does not seem to have any difficulties to recognize text that has been moved and at the same time has been changed.

However, with long texts, I find it very hard to read and find my way around the output.

Additionally, I'm not sure what the below options do:

-    "Reject blocks if too short and common"
-    "Words: reject blocks if shorter"
-    "Maximum rejection cycles"
-    "Repeated diff"
-    "Recursive diff"

...all the more since I can't reproduce any differences in the output when any of these options are checked, or are not checked.

For example, I can't seem to prevent the wikEd diff tool to mark single words as moved when playing around with these options.

Scott_Y:
Does anybody have an update on the ability of CompareIt! to detect moved words, lines, or blocks? Thanks.

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