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Topic       : User Manual for TeraDesk
Author      : Wout Klaren, Henk Robbers, Djordje Vukovic
Version     : February 2017
Subject     : Documentation/Utilities
Nodes       : 87
Index Size  : 2746
HCP-Version : 3
Compiled on : Atari
@charset    : atarist
@lang       : en
@default    : Main
@help       : 
@options    : -i -t4 +z
@width      : 75
View Ref-File
index=85
   Contents

index=85
      Menus and Dialogs

index=85
         Menu title: File

4.2.4   Compare...                                            TeraDesk

Tera Desktop  has the capability  to compare  contents of files.  When
this menu  item  is selected,  a dialog appears  in which the user can
enter the names of two  files to  be  compared. If  this  menu item is
selected  when  either  one  or  two files  are  already  selected  in
Directory windows,  the names of those files will  be entered into the
dialog automatically.

If the [Insert] key is pressed  while the cursor is in any  of the two
fields in this dialog, the file selector will appear which can help in
entering the filenames. A double click by mouse has the same effect.

Clicking 'OK' in the dialog starts the comparison.  When a  difference
between the contents  of  the  two  files  is  detected,  the contents
of both files near  the detected difference is displayed in the dialog
as well as the offset  of  the found  difference from the start of the
first file.  Note that  instead  of any  'null' characters,  the <DEL>
character, usually represented  by a small triangle, will be used as a
substitution.

File   comparison   function   tries  to  use  some  intelligence  and
resynchronize further comparison  in  the files  after a difference is
found.  The width of the resynchronization window  can be  entered  in
the dialog, in the range of  1 to 99 characters.  Smaller window sizes
will set Tera Desktop to detect  small  differences  closely following
each other.  Larger window sizes will set  Tera Desktop to  treat such
cases as a  single difference and to  resynchronize  comparison  after
skipping  a complete  block  of  small differences. It is  recommended
that window width be set  not larger  than  the  length  of  the field
where  the differences are  displayed  in the  dialog (30 characters),
so that complete differing segments can be viewed.

This  function completely reads both files into memory,  and may be of
limited use on machines with small RAM.

An installed application  can be set to perform  the compare function.
The application will  completely replace the built-in compare function
and its dialog in TeraDesk. See Set applications...