Understanding QuickDiffs

Using colors, QuickDiffs tell the story behind the changes you have made, or are in the process of making, to the contents of a text editor. The colors indicate additions, deletions, and inline changes to the editor's content, compared to the content at the time of loading the file, or compared to a blank document if you started with a blank document. For QuickDiffs DeltaWalker uses the same colors, carrying the same meaning, as the colors for additions, deletions, and inline changes.

Let's walk through an example that illustrates most of the possible combinations the QuickDiffs can depict.

File comparison QuickDiffs image.

Here is what this partial screenshot of a second text editor has to say:

  1. Lines #15 and #16 have been added in the second editor, relative to the first, before the files were even loaded for comparison. The first QuickDiff—the green background of #15—indicates that somewhere on line #15 a change was made after the file was loaded. Indeed the string IByteSequence replaced the string ByteBuffer.
  2. The short, horizontal orange line between lines #17 - #18 tells us that one or more lines were deleted on that spot. The fact that the line doesn't span the entire width of the editor, as does the line b/n lines #21 and #22, tells us that whatever lines were deleted in the second editor, they were deleted in the first editor as well.
  3. The third QuickDiff—the blue background of #19—suggests that the entire line was added, after the file was loaded.
  4. The next QuickDiff—the short, horizontal orange line between lines #21 - #22—that one or more lines were deleted at that location. In contrast to QuickDiff #2 however, the thin, horizontal orange line that runs across the entire editor indicates that the deleted lines were deleted only in the second editor.
  5. The last QuickDiff—the green background of #23—says that one or more changes were made on this line. Indeed, to the right of it, we see several characters with darker green and blue background, either or all of which could be the changes in question. Hovering over the actual QuickDiff (the background of #23) displays a tooltip containing the original text. With the help of the tooltip we can conclude that the actual change that triggered the QuickDiff is the 'name' part of the word pathname.

Saving a file with QuickDiffs does not clear the QuickDiffs information. This way information about changes made to a file after it's opened remains available for as long as the file stays open in DeltaWalker. Closing and opening a file containing QuickDiffs resets the QuickDiffs information.

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