CompareMate is an easy-to-use program that allows the user to compare two formatted documents and see the differences between the documents.  In addition, the user has the option to view a redline view of the differences between the documents.  Navigation controls in the program provide a convenient way for the user to review the differences.

Features Include:

1. Does not require Microsoft Word or Office (unlike competing products).
2. CompareMate is Fast! Choose between two highly-optimized algorithms when comparing documents to obtain the best performance for your document characteristics.
3. Compare documents that are stored in .doc, .rtf and .txt format.
4. Compare documents of different types.  For example, compare a Word document to a RTF document.
5. Easily see differences in the two compared documents in a side-by-side view.
6. View a redline representation of the differences between the two compared documents.
7. See relative positions of differences in the compared documents using the diffbar feature of the program.
8. Navigate through differences in the compared documents using VCR style buttons or by clicking directly on the color coded diffbar.
9. Customizable user options for difference coloring and highlighting.
10. The ability to save opened documents in several different document formats.  This applies to the redline document as well.
11. Pattern recognition technology is used within the program to ensure that differences detected in the documents are rendered in a visually intuitive way for display to the user.

 Main concepts

All that is required to use the program is to select two documents and click the compare button on the application toolbar.  This action will cause the program to compare the two documents and highlight differences between them in the side-by-side view.  For each version of the document, you can see what has been added or removed. To generate a redline view, simply press the generate redline toolbar button prior to comparing the documents.

Differences between two documents come in three types: change, insert and delete.  The options dialog in the program allows the user to specify formatting options for each type of difference.  The default colors are green for a change, blue for an insert and red for a delete.

Differences are detected at two levels within document structure.  These levels of detection (paragraph and word level) are handled by the program automatically.

Scrolling Views and Zooming

Synchronized scrolling further enhances your ability to locate and review document differences.  When you scroll the left document window, the right document window will scroll with it.  The right window scrolls independently and does not affect the left window at all.  Since changes to the document may affect where word wrapping occurs, left and right scrolling of the two document views are independent and are not synchronized. 

Convenient Zoom in and Zoom out buttons are provided directly on the application toolbar.  The program remembers the last zoom settings and uses them when the program is restarted.

Navigating Through Differences

You can navigate through differences found in compared documents in two ways. First, there is a set of VCR style buttons on the application toolbar that allow you to move through the differences.  When one of these buttons are clicked, the two document views are scrolled to show the current difference.  You'll also notice that the diffbar in the middle of the screen will indicate where this difference is relative to the two documents.  This is indicated on the diffbar by a rectangle that surrounds the two diff arrows that correspond to the current difference being viewed. 

The second way to navigate through differences in the compared documents is to click on the diffbar directly.  The diffbar contains color coded arrow symbols that indicate where differences in the two documents reside.  The arrow symbols are connected by a line so that it is easy to see where the differences are in the two documents.  Red arrows indicate deletions, blue arrows indicate insertions and green arrows indicate changes.

The options dialog accessible from the toolbar or the Tools menu item allows the user to select the highlighting style to use when navigating through differences.  The types of difference highlighting are: None, Left Bar, Right Bar, Box and Shade.

Requirements:

CompareMate runs on Windows XP or 2000 operating systems. We recommend an 800MHz CPU or better, with a minimum of 256MB RAM, and 30MB available hard disk space.

Unlike competing products, you do not have to have Microsoft Word or Office installed on machines where you use CompareMate!

CompareMate relies on Microsoft's .Net Framework Version 1.1, which may already be installed on yuor computer if you have automatic updates turned on.  If the .Net Framework is not installed, the setup program will detect this and install it automatically before installing CompareMate.