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A comment on Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life?.

Re:Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life? by aggieNick02 on Thursday November 16, 2023 @10:42AM (#38290913)
CompareIt! [1] - It's an ancient diff program last updated over a decade ago, but I've never found a diff program nearly as useful.

It is windows only, but it is fast, allows quickly setting manual anchor points (I miss this horribly when doing git diffs via vimdiff), and has converters for common file formats like doc and pdf (extracts the text and then does the diff).

I use it for both work and home. In addition to code diff, it's great for comparing things like PDFs of insurance renewals, to see what has changed.

It's the best $30 I've ever spent on software.

[1] https://www.grigsoft.com/wincmp3.htm

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life? by speps on Thursday November 16, 2023 @11:01AM (#38291165)
I always request a Beyond Compare [1] license every job I have now, for similar reasons.

[1] https://www.scootersoftware.com/

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Re:Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life? by aggieNick02 on Thursday November 16, 2023 @12:57PM (#38292975)
I remember trying Beyond Compare several years ago (after it was clear CompareIt! was abandon-ware) - it came close, but back then (for me at least) CompareIt! was a better experience. (It was also what I was already used to, to be fair.)

But I should probably take a look again and see how it compares now, because I can only imagine what vulnerabilities might lurk in CompareIt!'s stale PDF/Word/etc. viewers.

Almost any code movement/indentation changes seem to yield messy diffs in vimdiff, while CompareIt! (and others like Beyond Compare) could deal with huge movement and let you see what actually changed.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life? by janpio on Thursday November 16, 2023 @12:00PM (#38292047)
Oh wow, I use WinMerge and they almost look identical on the screenshots. Honestly googled if they are not the same, or open source version of it - but does not seem so.
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Re:Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life? by red-iron-pine on Thursday November 16, 2023 @02:34PM (#38294273)
probably just front ends to diff or fc commands, drawn the same way.
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Re:Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life? by Panqueca_do_mar on Thursday November 16, 2023 @03:43PM (#38295185)
You've maybe tried it, but if not check out https://meldmerge.org
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life? by KomoD on Saturday November 18, 2023 @07:15PM (#38326620)
I really miss software like this... simple, fast, small, just works, they're rare nowadays
[ Parent | on HN ]