4. What's new in 2.2

4.1. Unicode support

WinMerge 2.2 is distributed with ANSI executable (WinMerge.exe) for Windows 95/98/ME and Unicode executable (WinMergeU.exe) for Windows NT /200/XP. Unicode executable supports UCS-2 and UTF-8 files and filenames.

Note

It is unfortunate that two executable files are needed. But there is no currently way to get only one executable working. MS Unicode layer does not help WinMerge since WinMerge needs to be comparing files in different codepages.

4.2. Archive support

WinMerge 2.2 can open and save several archivetypes. Archive support requires installing 7-zip. Refer to Read Me.rtf file for info about compatible 7-zip version. 7-zip can be downloaded from 7-zip.org.

4.3. Shell integration

WinMerge 2.2 can be integrated into Windows Shell. Shell integration adds "Winmerge" menuitem to Windows Explorer's context menu for easy and fast comparing files and directories.

4.4. Selecting filter from commandline

New -f commandline switch allows selecting used filter or mask for files.

4.5. Project files

WinMerge can read paths to open from project files. Project files are simple XML files storing one or two paths, and also possibly choice of which filter to use and whether to include subfolders.

4.6. Generating patches

GNU/diffutils compatible patch files can be created from two files. Several formats and compare options are supported.

4.7. Plugins

Plugins are now supported to preprocess files before actual compare or to extend editor functionality. Plugins can be programmed using several languages supporting COM. Example plugins are included.

4.8. Improved directory compare

Many new features and improvements:

4.9. Improved file compare

Many new features and improvements: