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Re: diffing latex files -- strikeout?



On Monday 12 December 2005 05:07, Tim Connors wrote:
> I would like to produce a latexed file (such as for sending to
> referees and colloborators) with changes highlighted.
>
> What I have found of use so far, are wdiff[1] to highlight the
> differences to the latex file, on the terminal, ignoring line
> wrapping differences (since I use emacs' M-q to reflow text when I
> make changes).

I have a similar problem. I keep my Latex documents in svn and I would 
like to have a simple way to see, for example, exactly what I have 
changed before checking in a new version.

I can use any diff utility in svn. The problem is that I have not yet 
found a decent diff utility that solves my problem.

In my case the problem is not re-wrapping paragraphs. The problem is 
that I do not insert any hard line breaks in paragraphs at all. I let 
my editor wrap long lines as needed, depending on the font size, window 
size, etc. I like this way of working with my current set of tools, and 
I would rather not change it.

Now if I change just one word in a long paragraph, standard "diff" tools 
only tell me that this one long line has changed. They just show the 
old and the new version. It is up to me to find exactly what changes I 
have made in this relatively long piece of text.

I have tried wdiff and several other "word diff" utilities, but I have 
not been able to find a set of command line switches that shows just 
what I have changed and some context but not too much. A sample output 
could be something as simple as this:

+ ... is a modified version of the sample ...
- ... is a sample ...

I do not want to have any fancy GUI or something like that; and, most 
importantly, I do not want to see pages of text where there are no 
changes.

Also note that there may be several small changes in one paragraph. Some 
tools are not able to identify all of them individually; they just show 
one large block of changed text.

Does anyone have any experience with similar problems? It does not 
really matter if the tool is designed for Latex files or arbitrary text 
files.

Best regards,
Jukka Suomela



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