_______________________________________________________________ Araxis PMdiff 4.6 for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 Release Notes - 15 January 1998 ________________________________ IMPORTANT NOTES Do you have the latest version of PMdiff? Check the Araxis Web site (http://www.araxis.com/) to make sure. You can order copies of PMdiff on-line. See the PMdiff home page (http://www.araxis.com/html/pmdiff.html) for further details. PMdiff 4.6 is a fully 32 bit multithreaded application. It is intended for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. PMdiff will NOT run on Windows 3.x, Win32s, or Windows NT 3.51 or earlier. ________________________________ INTRODUCTION PMdiff is a visual file comparison application. It works the way you work. Visually. Files are displayed side by side. Differences are highlighted and lines are drawn showing how the files are related. PMdiff allows you to select individual changes between two versions of a file, and save the resulting merged file. PMdiff is highly configurable. Fonts and colours and other settings can be altered to show changes in a way that suits you. Check out the friendly on-line help for details. PMdiff for Windows 95 and Windows NT lets you compare entire folder (directory) trees. You can quickly compare all the files in two different directories that are different. Ideal for team-working! PMdiff is available for Microsoft Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 and IBM OS/2 Warp version 3.0. ________________________________ INSTALLATION Run the installation program, setup.exe, supplied with the package. You can install from floppy or hard disk. Alternatively, use the Add/Remove Programs object in the Control Panel. Should you wish to uninstall PMdiff, you can use the uninstall facility available from the Add/Remove Programs object. ________________________________ GENERAL NOTES Two pairs of (small!) sample files are provided with PMdiff. These are installed to the PMdiff installation directory. The files are: hippo1.txt, hippo2.txt and mary1.txt, mary2.txt You may wish to try comparing these. The Araxis Web site now has three full PMdiff tutorials. Even if you've used PMdiff before, you will probably benefit from viewing these. ________________________________ EVALUATION AND LICENSED VERSIONS PMdiff exists in evaluation and commercial versions. The two version are identical, except that the evaluation version has an enforced 30 day trial period. You may use the evaluation version freely for up to 30 days. The current evaluation version will expire on 31st June 1998. A new evaluation version will be made available on the Araxis web-site at that time. If you find PMdiff useful and wish to continue using it after the 30 day evaluation period then you should purchase the commercial version. Purchasing is easy. You can order on-line via the Internet (see http://www.araxis.com/html/pmdiff.html), by e-mail, by fax, by phone or by ordinary mail. You can use your credit card. See 'How to register and receive support' in the on-line help for more details about registration. You may like to use the text file orderfrm.txt to help you place your order. The use of Araxis PMdiff 4.6 is subject to a license agreement. See the license.txt file included in this distribution for full details. The license agreement is also shown during PMdiff installation. ________________________________ WARRANTY Your attention is drawn to the disclaimer in the on-line help (see 'Warranty' in the on-line help). ________________________________ HISTORY PMdiff 4.6 Menu keyboard mnemonics now work. Folder comparison changes: + Results are now presented in a proper expandable/collapsable tree format. + A new pattern filter has been added to the folder comparison options page. + Files and folders can be hidden temporarily. This can be useful for hiding irrelevant files when conducting a code review. + Comparison progress is now displayed in the status bar. + A new filter has been added. It is now possible to have the file list contain only those files that match the new filter. + Files can now be copied easily from one folder hierarchy into the right position in another folder hierarchy. + Files can be re-tested after merging to update their icon states. A selection bug in the drop-down file and folder history lists on NT 4.0 has been fixed. There is a new printing option for file comparison views. You can now choose to print only those pages within a comparison that contain changes. The PMdiff Automation APIs have been enhanced. A few bug fixes. PMdiff 4.5 File and folder comparisons can be printed out in a variety of different ways. Merged files can be viewed and edited within PMdiff before saving them. The file comparison window can be split horizontally and vertically. File comparison and folder comparison windows now have drop-down history lists for file and folder names. Text within file comparison windows can be copied to the clipboard. Keyboard support within the file comparison windows has been greatly enhanced. You can search for text within file comparison windows and (also replace text in) merged files. Tab expansion within file comparisons is now performed on-the-fly so you no longer lose tab characters when saving merged files. There is now an option to save merged files with either CR LF or LF line-endings. Timestamps for files in the folder comparison window can be toggled on/off. "More recent" files are marked with a red dot. Folder comparison windows no longer automatically start a comparison when they are opened. You can have more than one folder comparison window open at a time. The More Windows... window is now usable. The PMdiff Automation APIs have been enhanced. PMdiff 4.0a You can now use the keyboard (as well as the double arrow scroll bar buttons) to jump to the next and previous differences. Use Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn. OLE Automation is now supported. Control PMdiff from VB, C++ and your favorite office applications! The PMdiff.tlb file is a type library which can be used from Visual C++, Visual Basic, Visual J++ and many other languages. See the on-line help for details about exposed objects and their methods and properties. The "Ignore all whitespace" option now causes PMdiff to ignore different line endings (CR and CR LF) as well as other whitespace. This is useful when comparing documents used on both Unix and PC systems. Caseless comparisons can now be performed between files. "Perform thorough comparison" will now always perform a thorough comparison even if file sizes and timestamps don't match. Folder names can now be specified on the command line, and they will be compared within the folder comparison window. Numerous other user-interface tweaks. PMdiff 4.0 Major cosmetic make-over. On-line help re-worked to follow Windows 95 conventions. Network directory comparison bug on Windows 95 worked-around. Overview added. New splash bitmap. PMdiff 3.0 First port to Windows 95 and NT. ________________________________ CONTACTING ARAXIS You can contact us by visiting our Web site http://www.araxis.com/, or you can send e-mail to one of the following addresses: * sales@araxis.com - for sales related enquiries * suggestions@araxis.com - for suggestions * bugs@araxis.com - for bug reports * support@araxis.com - for general support ________________________________ TRADEMARKS PMdiff and Araxis are trademarks of Araxis Ltd. Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and Windows 95 are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. OS/2 and IBM are trademarks of IBM Corporation. Unix is a trademark of The Open Group. All other trademarks are acknowledged. _______________________________________________________________ Jason Shannon and Daniel Neades, PMdiff team, Araxis Ltd