News |
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March 12th, 2008: We just released ECMerge 2.1.76. This version fixes several bugs and introduce new parameters for the command line, new scriptable options and improves behaviour in several situations.
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Standard/Pro comparison chart
The tables below summarize the major features in the two
versions (Standard and
Professional) of Ellié Computing
Merge.
General
| Feature |
Standard version |
Professional version |
View/Edit Text
Files
Open a text file window with basic edition
capabilities. |

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Text Comparison
See table below for details. |

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Image Comparison
See table below for details |

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Folder
Comparison
See table below for details. |

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Options
sets
Options sets keep your settings in a safe place you can
reuse them later easily |

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Templates
/ status documents
Template and status allow you to export all the
parameters to generate reports from command line or to
start repeated tasks. They can also be opened again to
change some settings or to work interactively in the
graphical interface. |

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SCC
/ Version control Browsing and Check-out
You can now browse directly into several Source Code
Control repositories, listing and retrieving files from
any configuration (branch, label, date...).
For version control tools which have a check-out
command, you can check-out files from configured
mappins.
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Reports in UNIX
patch, XML and HTML formats
Generate reports of files and folder comparisons. A
folder comparison report can optionnaly include
sub-reports for text and binary files comparisons, as
embedded reports or as independant files. |

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UNIX
Patch Import
Apply directly or preview patches to see how they
alter your text files or folders. |

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Tabs
view
Open multiple files or folders comparison windows. |

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Drag'n'drop enabled
Drag'n'drop a file or folder over the combo at the top
of a view and this item gets compared automatically. Drag
2 or 3 items on the application window and a new
comparison opens them for comparison instantly. Drag
files and folders between panels to launch Generic
copies |

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Unicode
and MBCS Support
Display, edit, compare and merge Unicode or MBCS encoded
text files. Many Windows specific code-pages are also
supported. |

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Side-by-side
differences and result view
Display files side-by-side with linking lines. The
result merged file is displayed below. |

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Hideable
ancestor item
Show or hide the ancestor item to suit your preferences
or needs. |
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Jump
to previous/next difference or conflict
Quickly navigate between differences and conflicts in a
file using the toolbar or keyboard shortcuts. |

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Converters
Customizable applications to be used to preprocess files
before opening them (in both text editor and comparison
views). |

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Scripting
You can script from command line or through macros
(run with configurable shortcuts or menus). Scripts can
do almost everything that you can do, from comparing
and merging, to producing reports, editing text,
synchronizing files and so much. The scripting engine
is a full scripting engine, compatible with ECMAScript
standard.
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Integration
with Configuration Management systems
Define Ellié Computing Merge as the default
Diff or Merge tool to use in source code control (SCC) or
software configuration management (SCM) solutions. |

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FTP
Compare at full speed with the multi-connection
comparison engine, update your websites using
FTP and FTP over SSL (implicit and explicit AUTH)
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Command
line
Call Ellié Computing Merge from other applications
(SCC/SCM) or use it as batch (for periodical reports
generation). |

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Customize
user interface
Change the font face/size and the comparison
colours for both screen display and HTML
reports. |

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Keyboards
shorcuts / Customizable
shortcuts
Control Ellié Computing Merge using the
keyboard. You can define your own shortcuts to match your
needs. |

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Display line
endings characters
Display line terminators as CR and LF characters to
see differences between files produced on different
operating systems. |

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Bookmarks
Record the cursor position and return to it whenever you
need. Bookmarks shape and colours are customizable.
Bookmarks are available in both Text Files and Folders
Comparisons. |

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Go to
line
Move to a specific line number in a document. |

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Find/Replace
Usual Find/Replace feature for Text files. Find files by
name in Folders Comparisons. |

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Line
Numbering
A hideable margin contains the line number in text
files. |

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Text Comparison and
Merging
| Feature |
Standard version |
Professional version |
Two-way
comparison and merging
Display inserted, removed and changed lines
and blocks between two text files (source
code, HTML/XML/CSS documents, web pages or another text
format). |

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Three-way
comparison and merging
Merge your changes and those of your co-workers based on
a common ancestor into one copy. |
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In-line
differences
Displays the differences inside a line (at word or
character level). |

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XML
Pretty printing / Compaction
Greatly improves the quality of the differentiation for
XML files. |

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Security
area
The security area prevents automatic merges of
modification in left and right files with respect to the
ancestor, if these modifications are nearer than a limit
that you specify. |
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Ignoring
particular changes
Allows you to ignore particular changes (for example,
lines automatically generated by an SCC tool such as $Id:
marker or context lines of .po translation files).
Ignored changes are skipped by the previous/next
difference and hidden in the File Difference overview,
showing you only the differences that you consider
important. |

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Take
ignored changes text from specified file
Different options allow you to ignore changes, however
these changes are not necessarily totally insignificant,
this option allows you to take the ignored portions from
a specified file. It proves to be particularly useful
when you ignored white spaces at start of lines for
example. |

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File
overview graphs
Allows very quick navigation within text files. Presents
a quick overview of the number of differences between
compared files. |

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Changes
linking lines
The relations between changed text blocks are displayed
as graphical links between the two involved
versions. |

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Synchronized
scrolling
Vertical scrolling of any text file keeps the matching
blocks in front of each other. |

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Save/Restore comparison status
Save a comparison at any time and reload it later,
preserving all your work. |

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Conflict Highlighting
Conflicting blocks of text in the files are flagged with
a conflict marker for manual resolution. You can navigate
between conflicts (all or only unresolved) using toolbar
icons and shortcut keys. |

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Conflict
Markers
If displayed, the margin shows a customizable
marker in front of conflicts. |

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Ignore
whitespaces options
Whitespace differences can be considered as unimportant.
Ellié Computing Merge can ignore leading, embedded
and trailing whitespaces. |

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Ignore
Line Endings option
Differences in line ending characters can be considered
as unimportant. Allows you to compare and merge files
produced on different operating systems. |

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Compare
clipboard content
Fill easily the views from the text copied into the
clipboard |

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Image Comparison
| Feature |
Standard version |
Professional version |
Many
file formats
Open GIF, BMP, JPG, PNG, TIFF, XPM... natively and use
converters to view many other file formats |

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Parameterable
differentiation
Choose between several differentiation algorithms
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| Zooming,
stretching, alignmentWhen the images are not of the
same size or one is a detail of the other, align and
stretch it easily with the tools or right click menu |

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Several
measures
Compute PSNR and MSE, in addition to exact/similar and
different pixels count |

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Compare
clipboard content
Fill easily the views from the text copied into the
clipboard |

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Folder Comparison and
Merging
| Feature |
Standard version |
Professional version |
Two-way
comparison and merging
Display file insertions, removals and changes between
two folder hierarchies. You can compare branches of
source code, entire web sites or other sets of text and
binary files. |

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Three-way
comparison and merging
Merge changes between two folder hierarchies and a
common ancestor. Use it to merge branches in a
source code control (SCC) or software configuration
management (SCM) solutions. |
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Integrated
file comparison
Compare and merge differences between files
from the folder hierarchies comparison view. |

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Filters
Define critera to include or not files or folders in the
Folder Comparison. Excluded files are not displayed
unless "hidden files" are wished. |

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Mix
Unicode files with native encoding files
Ellié Computing Merge can be used to compare
folders with mixed encoding thanks to its Unicode
auto-detection algorithm (even without signatures). |

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Compare folders of different
encodings
Specify one default encoding per folder
hierarchy, enable or disable Unicode auto-detection |

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Right
click summary
With a single right-click you get a comparison summary
for the selected items |

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Multi-threaded background
comparisons
Ellié Computing Merge can compare documents in
background and multi-threaded! Take advantage of new
double cores or multi-processor systems. You can stop the
comparisons at any time and restart them later if you
need your CPU for something more urgent. Ellié
Computing Merge gives a slightly lower priority to these
comparison to give you the best user experience. |

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Drag'n'drop /
Cut'n'paste copy
You can drag'n'drop or cut'n'paste files and folders
from a panel to another and easily launch the Generic
Copy dialog box |

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Generic /
Filtered copy
The Generic copy box allows you to copy/mirror easily a
subset of the files from a side to another. A
comprehensive interface allows to simulate what would
happen. You can permit many different actions by type and
realize exactly the wanted task (e.g. Overwrite older,
Overwrite newer, Create new files, Create new
folders...) |

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Rename
You can rename items in-place or in the Item properties
box |

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Item
properties box
View item properties (size, last update...). |

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Time
adjustments
Use time adjustments to cope with servers which do
handle time zones by themselves |

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Free Compare
Launches comparisons between any 2 files or folders or 3
files or folders with Pro version |

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See also
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