Tips & Tricks
Search, don't scroll |
Search, as fast as you type, for the files and folders you care
about in your folder comparison window. A useful little feature,
Search lets you instantly find your way in hierarchies with
hundreds and thousands of items - simply start typing and watch the
contents of the trees get automatically filtered and the results of
your search query - highlighted. |
Fly-by merge buttons |
DeltaWalker's merge buttons are always there when you need them and not a second longer. Clear, non-intrusive, well positioned, and versatile in functionality, they are a powerful and ergonomic way of merging differences. With their help you can replace, add, and delete a difference.
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Birds-eye view |
The birds-eye view communicates the following information about the available differences:
True to form, it does so in an accessible, timely, subtle, and clear way. Clicking on a marker in the birds-eye view brings the difference it represents into view and selects it. |
QuickDiffs: seeing what has changed as you edit |
Using colors, QuickDiffs tell the story behind the changes you have made, or are in the process of making, to the contents of a text editor. The colors indicate additions, deletions, and changes (inside matching blocks of text) to the editor's content, compared to the content at the time of loading the file, or compared to a blank document if you started with a blank document. For QuickDiffs DeltaWalker uses the same colors, with the same meaning, as the colors for additions, deletions, and inline changes.
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Comparison summary panels |
Sensitive to the content being compared - files, folders, XML - the comparison summary panels located in the right corner of the status bar represent:
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Difference navigation |
The convenience of difference navigation in a diff tool is of the essence. In addition to the pairs of menu and toolbar items and shortcut keys dedicated to this, DeltaWalker offers two more ways for navigating differences:
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Go to previous / next edit location |
When working with a file comparison window, Navigate > Previous Edit (Ctrl+7) and Navigate > Next Edit (Ctrl+8) take you to your previous or next edit, respectively. |
Key Assist |
DeltaWalker boosts a wealth of features, including ultra-powerful text editors. Make the best of them by knowing your way around the shortcut keys. To bring up the Key Assist window hit Ctrl+Shift+L or go to Help > Key Assist...
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Finding a string incrementally |
Use Edit > Incremental Find Next (Ctrl+J) or Edit > Incremental Find Previous (Ctrl+Shift+J) to enter the incremental find mode, and start typing the string to match. Matches are found incrementally as you type. The search string is shown in the status line. Press Ctrl+J or Ctrl+Shift+J to go to the next or previous match. Press Enter or Esc to exit incremental find mode. |
Ctrl+E Editor List |
To switch quickly between file comparison windows use the Ctrl+E key binding - it displays a list of all open editors. The list supports type-ahead to find the editor as well as allows you to close editors using a popup menu or the Delete key. |
Shortcut key picks |
Here are just some of the shortcut keys you'd wish your favorite text editor also had:
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XML beautification and canonicalization |
XML files are, by definition, text files yet they represent hierarchical data. Running a text comparison on XML files is often sufficient, however at times the results might not be what you'd expected. For instance, two XML files with logically identical content will be reported as different by the text comparison engine when they have elements with differently ordered attributes, or when their formatting is different. Designed to be human-readable, XML data are often computer-generated and XML generators often have different formatting and attribute ordering. When comparing XML files DeltaWalker offers the ability to either prettify or canonicalize the their content -just bring up the context sensitive menu and select the most appropriate menu option. Beautification typically offers a more compact and better aligned representation, while retaining comments. Canonicalization, on the other hand, is more conservative in deciding which space & new line characters can be formatted out or not, ensures that attributes are alphabetically ordered and strips away all comments. |
Side-by-side folder and file comparison |
The ergonomics of the way DeltaWalker integrates folder and file comparison can hardly be overstated. Leveraging the familiar file-system browser metaphor, DeltaWalker encourages you to see both the forest and the trees. Browse through your folder comparison results and when a file stops your attention - double click it and DeltaWalker will open it for comparison just below the folder comparison window (default position). It's that intuitive. |
Tiling file comparison windows |
You can use drag and drop to modify the layout of your editor work
area i.e. the area occupied by the file comparison windows. Grab a
file comparison window tab and drag it to the edge of the editor
work area. The arrow dock icon |
Minimizing and maximizing windows |
You can maximize the folder comparison window or a file comparison window by double clicking on their tabs. For instance, maximizing the file comparison window minimizes the folder comparison one to an icon in a toolbar alongside the application window (e.g. left side):. |
Character encoding |
Inherently Unicode-based, DeltaWalker is able to detect the character encoding of many, but not all, text files. Unicode encodings are typically easy to detect, thanks to a two-byte leading identifier, while SBCS don't lend themselves well for auto-detection. If a character encoding is detected incorrectly many, or all, characters would appear garbled, or unreadable. In case DeltaWalker is unable to correctly detect the character encoding of a file, you can easily select in from one of several places:
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Line endings |
As with character encoding, DeltaWalker facilitates changing the line delimiters of a text file in just the right moments and places:
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