Oxygen XML Author
offers six different diff algorithms to choose from for file comparison:
- two XML diff algorithms: XML Fast and XML
Accurate,
- a Syntax Aware algorithm that gives very good results on all file
types known by
Oxygen XML Author
,
- three all-purpose algorithms: line based, word based and character based.
Any of these six algorithms can be used to perform differences
on request, but
Oxygen XML Author
offers also an automatic mode that selects the most appropriate one, based on the file content
and size.
The Files Comparison preferences panel is
opened from menu and offers the following configurable preferences:
- Default algorithm - The default algorithm used
for comparing files. The following options are available:
- Auto - Automatic selection of the diff algorithm, based on the
file content and size.
- Characters - Computes the differences at character level.
- Words - Computes the differences at word level.
- Lines - Computes the differences at line level.
- Syntax aware - For the file types known by
Oxygen XML Author
, this algorithm computes the differences taking into consideration the syntax
(the specific types of tokens) of the documents.
- XML Fast - A diff algorithm well-suited for large XML documents
(tens of MB). Sacrifices accuracy in favor of speed.
- XML Accurate - XML-tuned diff algorithm. It favors accuracy
over speed.
- Algorithm strength - Controls the amount of resources allocated to
the application to perform the comparison. The algorithm stops searching more differences
when reaches the maximum allowed resources. A dialog is shown when this limit is reached and
partial results are displayed. Four settings are available: Low,
Medium (default), High and Very
High.
- Ignore Whitespaces - Enables or disables the whitespace ignoring
feature. Ignoring whitespace means that before performing the comparison, the application
normalizes the content and trims its leading and trailing whitespaces.
- XML Diff Options - This set of options allows you
to specify the types of XML nodes for which the differences will be ignored (will not be
reported) by the XML Fast and XML Accurate
algorithms.
- Merge adjacent differences - If checked, it considers two adjacent
differences as one when the differences are painted in the side-by-side editors. If
unchecked, every difference is represented separately.
- Mark end tags as different for modified elements - If checked, end
tags of modified elements are presented as differences too, otherwise only the start tags
are presented as differences.
- Ignore expansion state for empty elements - If checked, empty
elements in both expansion states are considered matched, that is
<element/> and <element></element> are
considered equal.