Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Text comparison tool with most robust similarity/moved block detection

(1/3) > >>

David.P:
Hi forum,

often I use text comparison tools, for example WinMerge, in order to compare two document versions, for example from different sources.

The problem is that the documents often originate from (different) OCR processes and are only slightly different mainly due to the OCR errors. Therefore, even if the contents of two original documents should be identical, WinMerge often does not recognize this and therefore marks the entire document (erroneously) as completely different.

Therefore my question is whether anyone knows of a text comparison tool that has a even more robust block similarity detection* than for example WinMerge has.

Thanks for hints
David.P
__
*) Examples for similarity/moved block detection:
Meld:

(also not good with OCR'ed files)

XDiff:

(could not find a not commercial version for Windows)

Curt:
WinMerge can do what you want. Just set the line-difference highlighting to character level:

-Superuser 4 yrs ago
--- End quote ---

Other than that:

16 Alternatives to WinMerge:
https://www.topbestalternatives.com/2015/top-5-best-alternatives-to-winmerge/

Free or Open Source WinMerge Alternatives for Windows - AlternativeTo.net:
https://alternativeto.net/software/winmerge/?license=free&platform=windows

Shades:
'ExamDiff Pro' and 'Beyond Compare' are commercial Differs that do, for my intends and purposes, a very good job on Windows.

David.P:
Thanks for the responses.

I have already tried lots of Differ tools, but none that I am aware of had a particularly robust moved block detection (when there are only so much little differences within otherwise identical blocks).

Therefore, still thankful for actual experiences regarding, expressly, moved block detection.

David.P:
For completeness, lately I've been playing around with the online diff tools at wikEd and at Vroniplag -- and must say that they are both pretty amazing with regard to moved blocks detection. Moved blocks are even detected when they additionally have been edited in one or both copies of the text.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page