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