Choosing session after opening via Explorer context menu?

[florian]

Is it possible to open a 2-way diff from explorer context menu and then choose the session settings to use?

The only way that I could work out is this:

• create a session with the desired settings for important/unimportant elements and leave the left/right file settings empty (this has to be done only once)
• start 2-way diffs from explorer context menu
• open a new session with the above settings
• manually copy & paste the file names from the 2-way diff to the yet empty session

Is there no easier way to apply the session settings to files already opened?
I'm missing a 'Sessions' drop down list next to the file format and encoding drop down lists...

Thanks,
Florian

[Aaron]

Hello,

The easiest way to do this would be to change the default settings on the Home screen, Edit Session defaults folder, and change the Text Compare default session settings. These would be the settings used for any new blank session.

Otherwise, if you need different blank saved sessions:
-Could you go into more detail on how you are using these sessions?
-save a few blank sessions (as you have), open them, then drag from Windows Explorer into the empty panes (one at a time, or both at once).

[florian]

Hello Aaron,

I need to change the 'importance' settings for different files. However, the importance settings
cannot be deduced from the file type, because there are multiple rule sets for the same type
of file.

When comparing XML files I've got a session that has a rule to treat differences in
the spelling of empty elements (i.e. '<tag/>' vs. '<tag></tag>' ) as unimportant.
But this should not be the default behavior in my case.

The same goes for all .txt files where the rules depend on the file contents rather
than on the file type.

It would be great to be able not only to choose the grammar but also the session settings
from a drop down list. If there are no file names in the saved session, then just apply the rules.

-florian

[Aaron]

Thanks for the suggestion, florian. I've added it to our Customer Wishlist.

In the current version, you can create multiple File Formats, and define different grammar elements.
TagsImportant and TagsUnimportant.
Both define the same text (<tag/>). TagsImportant defaults to Important under the SessionSetting defaults. TagsUnimportant defaults to Unimportant.

The File Format you pick from the dropdown menu will use the specific grammar element, which is either defaulted to important or unimportant.

[florian]

Thanks for considering my suggestion. Choosing the session after opening files would also allow changing between different replacements.

I forgot to mention that I had implemented the generic rule 'treat abbreviated empty elements as equal to unabbreviated empty elements' through replacements:

Side: Left
Find: <(\w+)\s*/>
Replace with: <$1></$1>

Side: Right
Find: <(\w+)\s*/>
Replace with: <$1></$1>

- Florian