Files Comparison

The Files Comparison preferences panel is opened from menu Options > Preferences > Diff > Files Comparison and offers the following configurable preferences:

The Files Comparison Preferences Panel

• 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 its 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 Developer, 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 - Ignoring whitespaces means that before performing the comparison, the application normalizes the content (collapses any sequence of whitespace characters (space, newline or tab characters) into a single space) and trims its leading and trailing whitespaces.
  Note: If the Ignore Whitespaces check box is selected, comparing the a b sequence with a b, Oxygen XML Developer finds no differences, because after normalization, all whitespaces from the first sequence are collapsed into a single space character. However, when comparing a b with ab (no whitespace between a and b), Oxygen XML Developer signals a difference.
• 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.