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Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso
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USAGE.DOC
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1991-11-18
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WHITEWARE'S COMPARE FOR WORDPERFECT*
Copyright 1991 James H. White
USAGE NOTES
COMPARE is designed to perform word-for-word comparison
of WordPerfect* documents, what some folks call "legislation-
style" document comparison. If you've used Wordperfect's*
comparison routine [Alt-F5,6,2], you're accustomed to phrase
oriented redlining, where each document phrase is shown as
deleted or redlined. In Wordperfect's* comparison, a phrase is a
section of text delimited by comma, period, colon, semicolon,
question mark, exclamation mark, or hard return. So, if you
change one word in a long clause, WordPerfect* will show the
entire clause struck and then show the entire new clause in red-
line.
For most of my work, a word-for-word comparison is more
useful than phrase by phrase, and I wrote this utility program to
accomplish such comparison. While I wrote it for other use, I
was surprised to discover the program was extraordinarily useful
for comparing versions of programs.
COMPARE works (mostly) by brute force, with every word
in a source document compared with every word in a secondary
document to create a giant list of paired pointers. Speed and
file size are optimized with a couple of tricks, but the basic
approach is still a word-by-word comparison. The resulting
pointer list is culled to eliminate criss-crossing pointers and
maximize the matches between the two documents.
By default, deleted material will be shown in strike-
out, added material will be shown in double-underline. The
CONFIGCD utility allows you to specify the method of comparison
display. You may select strike-out to designate deleted
material, or [brackets], <crooked brackets> or <^> to show that
material has been deleted without setting it out at length. For
new material, you may select redlining (as in Wordperfect),
underlining, double-underlining, bold, or you may combine bold
with any of the other three designations.
REQUIREMENTS AND LIMITATIONS.
Documents may be up to 64K in size. This is an
intentional limitation to avoid unreasonably long processing
times. On the rare occasion when I need to compare longer
documents, I split them into smaller pieces and compare the
resulting subdocuments.
A hard disk is essential. While the COMPARE program
would run from floppy, the amount of disk-access would slow the
operation down excessively. Also, there must be a fair amount of
available space on the disk for the temporary pointer files. How
much is needed depends on the size of the documents and the
degree of change between the two documents, but as much as a meg
might be necessary.
Choose a display option that does not duplicate codes
in your original documents.
I think of this version of the program as a "late beta"
edition. It works, and works well, but there may be glitches
that could show up in documents which contain obscure WordPerfect
codes. Eventually, I intend to do a final version, and welcome
suggestions to improve the operation or usability of the program.
The two changes I have in mind at this point are to build in a
point-and-shoot directory display and to make the comparison more
"intelligent." Also, if WordPerfect is augmented with new codes,
I will cope with these.
COMMENTS
In documents with limited changes, the program will
generate a couple of "File error" messages (882 and 917). These
are left over from debugging work, and do not affect the
operation of the program.
The double-underline codes may not work with certain
printer drivers, since the printer does not support this
typography. If a COMPARE document is retrieved with such a
driver selected, WordPerfect will convert these codes to single-
underline.
REGISTRATION.
As usual in shareware, registration is on the honor
system. If you find the program useful and continue using it,
you are asked to register and pay the registration fee of $20.
The eventual final program will be sent to paid registrants at no
additional cost. You may also do "free" registration, which will
put your name on the mailing list to be notified of the final
product.
To register, print REGISTER.DOC from the DOS prompt by
entering COPY REGISTER.DOC PRN <enter>.
CALL OR SEND SUGGESTIONS.
I'd be grateful for suggestions for enhancement or
corrections. If you find a bug in the program operation, please
send me the actual documents ("old" and "new") on disk or upload
to Compuserve 72060,1152. Notes to me on Compuserve will also be
answered.
*WordPerfect is a registered trademark of WordPerfect
Corporation.