═══ 1. GFC ═══ GFC is a graphical file comparison program. It compares two files on disk and notes lines that are common to both. A bar chart is drawn, giving an overall view of which lines match, and the text of either file, or a composite file, is displayed. The default view is the composite file. GFC recognises UNIX-style files (i.e. files using just a newline character to mark the end of a line, rather than OS/2's carriage return - newline combination). ═══ 2. Open Dialog ═══ The Open dialog supplies lists of files and directories from which the source files can be selected. The full path of the file is made by concatenating the file name to the directory, so you can type subdirectories in the name field if you want. '..' means the parent directory. If the name of File B is null, the name from File A is used. ═══ 3. Problem Message Box ═══ The Problem message box informs the user of a problem in the program. This may or may not be fatal. The user is required to acknowledge the message; the program will take appropriate action. ═══ 4. File Menu ═══ The File menu contains the following items: Open Allows new source files to be opened. Refresh Re-opens the files currently being contrasted, so that the latest changes made to them are used. Exit Closes GFC. ═══ 5. Help Menu ═══ The Help menu contains the following items: Help for help Explains the use of the help functions. Extended help Displays general help for GFC. Keys help Displays help on the keys that can be used in GFC. Help index Displays a list of selectable help topics. About Brief information about the application. ═══ 6. Keys for GFC ═══ GFC assigns the following special functions to keys: Alt+O Bring up the Open dialog. F3 Exit the GFC program. Alt+A Alt+B Display file A or B Alt+C Display the composite file Alt+L Alt+T Alt+I Ignore leading, trailing, or all blanks for line comparison. Use the Options menu to see the current status. Alt+U Display lines unique to either source file interleaved, as opposed to alternately. Alt+D Bring up the Define Colours dialog. Alt+F Bring up the Fonts dialog. Arrow keys Scroll the displayed file by one character. Page Up Page Down Scroll the file by the height of the text window. ═══ 7. View Menu ═══ The View menu changes the text displayed. This can be either of the source files, or the composite file. ═══ 8. Options Menu ═══ The Options menu contains the following items: Ignore leading blanks Re-contrasts the files, with white space (i.e. spaces, tabs or nulls) at the beginning of lines ignored. Any formatting of programs will thus be irrelevant. Ignore trailing blanks Ignores white space at the end of lines. Some editors can be inconsistent about leaving this in files. Ignore all blanks Disregards all white space, wherever it is in the files. This is useful for comparing programs in free-format languages, especially if differing editors have been used. Case Sensitive If this option is in use, upper and lower case alphabetical characters are treated as different characters. If it is not in use, the case is ignored, i.e. 'A' is treated the same as 'a', 'B' as 'b', etc. Interleave unique lines Orders unmatching blocks in the composite file so that lines from files A and B alternate. If this option is off, unmatching blocks will displayed as whole blocks from file A or B. Define colours used Allows user definition of the colours used by GFC. Set font used Changes the font and style used for the text display. Set TAB equivalent Changes the number of spaces a TAB character is equivalent to during the contrasting process. ═══ 9. Bar Chart ═══ The bar chart is a graphical representation of the two source files. Blocks of common lines are assigned a colour different from those around them, and drawn on the bars representing the files; a line links the matched blocks. The matched colours in the bar chart are used as the text colour for the file display; the default text colour for unmatched lines is black (red or yellow on the chart). Black lines by the bar chart show which parts of the files are currently on display. ═══ 10. Composite ═══ The composite file is made from the two source files, using the common lines where possible. This is the default colour scheme: Common lines have a white background. Lines unique to File A are shown in black on yellow. Lines unique to File B are shown in black on red. When a block of lines in File B has been moved from where it was in File A, the program has to guess whether block 1 was moved up past block 2, or block 2 moved down past block 1. It shows the larger block as static, and the other as moved in each file. The text shown as moved is written in a matched text colour, on a yellow or red background. The bar chart shows the connections. ═══ 11. Colours ═══ Default colours are: Text Background Yellow Lines unique to File A (or moved in File A) Used in bar chart and as text background. Red Lines unique to File B (or moved in File B) Used in bar chart and as text background. White Lines common to File A and File B Text background only. See Composite for how moved blocks are coloured. Text Foreground Blue Dark pink Dark green Dark cyan Text that has been matched in both files. The same colour is used for the identical text in each file; the choice of colour is such that surrounding blocks of matched lines use different ones. The same colour is used in the bar chart to show the lines. Black Unmatched text. The actual colours are defined by the user in the Define colours dialog. ═══ 12. Colours dialog ═══ The Colours dialog allows the colours used by GFC to be set to any of 16 colours provided by Presentation Manager. Five text and three background colours need to be defined. They do not have to be all different, but the display may be confusing if they are not. The default button resets all the colours to the program-supplied settings. ═══ 13. Font Dialog ═══ The Font dialog allows any fixed-width font present on the system to be used to display the file. If there is no suitable font, the program will use the System Proportional font, but text alignment will suffer as a result. The numbers given after the font names are point sizes. The italic and bold checkboxes allow the font to be displayed in different styles. ═══ 14. Set TAB equivalent Dialog ═══ The Set TAB dialog allows the user to set the number of spaces to which a single TAB character in a file is equivalent, for the contrasting process.