Release Notes

## WinMerge 0.2011.211.170 Release Notes

This is a beta release of WinMerge 2011.
It includes the following enhancements as compared to the previous stable release:

- WinIMergeLib is used for image comparison.
  This feature was adopted from WinMerge 2.16.

- SQLite 3 database files are presented in a modified version of SQLite Compare which allows its embedding into the WinMerge GUI.
  This modified version also fixes quite a number of bugs found in the original product, and continues to work independently from WinMerge.

- Limited support for Excel .xlsx files, and with the help of B2XTranslator also for Excel 2003 .xls and OpenDocument .ods files, is offered through ReoGrid.
  The ReoGrid Compare application implemented by that fork is specifically tailored to run inside the WinMerge GUI, but can also be used as a standalone application.

  An urgent warning on this one:
  While ReoGrid supports a remarkable subset of Excel's features, a round trip through ReoGrid isn't lossless.
  Therefore, take extra care when saving .xlsx files back after editing, and double-check whether the round-trip loss is tolerable for you.

- As an alternative to GNU diff, you can choose among algorithms provided by LibXDiff.
  In particular, you may find LibXDiff's indent heuristics option useful.
  This feature was adopted from WinMerge 2.16.

- File transform scriptlet protodec.wsc can be used to decode Protobuf messages.
  This feature makes use of protodec, which is bundled with WinMerge 2011.

- File transform scriptlet pandoc.wsc can be used to convert various kinds of document files to Markdown, HTML or plain text.
  This feature requires pandoc.exe to be on the executable search path, which you can achieve by installing pandoc.

- File transform scriptlet ToxyExtract.wsc can be used to convert various kinds of document files to plain text, or extract metadata from audio/video/image files.
  This feature makes use of toxy, which is bundled with WinMerge 2011 and appears to be a capable open-source replacement for xdoc2txt.

- Options dialog page Editor → File Transforms allows to opt in and out of available file transform defaults as applied when user chooses to Compare As → Tell from filename extension.

- The binary comparison view includes a Bookmarks menu.

- Syntax highlighting supports AutoIt (adopted from WinMerge 2.16) and some aspects of Markdown (unindented headings, comments, HTML islands).

- File type associations for syntax coloring are configurable in Options dialog page Editor → Lexers.

- Following a suggestion made ages ago on Bitbucket, the folder compare progress dialog offers an option to send an email when ready.

- The text comparison view can be switched to Table Layout to achieve column-wise alignment of CSV-like files.
  The detailed procedure is to select one instance of the character which the file at hand uses as its field separator, and then type Ctrl+T, or invoke the command through toolbar or menu.
  If the file also reserves a character for enquoting values to allow them to include instances of the field separator character, you can tell WinMerge so by selecting two adjacent characters, the first one representing a field separator, and the second one representing a field enquoting character.
  Hint: If the field separator follows the field enquoting character, you'd perform the selection from right to left.
  Note that WinMerge 2.16's Table Compare feature is superior in that it allows you to adjust cell widths, and can wrap texts inside cells accordingly.

- The Filter Comments option employs the syntax highlighter to extend its usefulness to many more file types than were addressed by the former approach.
  This feature was adopted from WinMerge 2.16.

##### Source code links for binaries included in this release:

- WinMerge 2011
- Frhed
- WinIMerge
- HTML Tidy
- Artistic Style
- SQLite Compare
- ReoGrid
- B2XTranslator
- toxy
- protodec
- jq

Jochen Neubeck, June 2021