## WinMerge 2.15.5 Beta Release Notes

- About This Release
- What Is New in 2.15.5 beta?
- Known Issues

October 2018

### About This Release

This is a WinMerge beta release which is meant for preview the current state of WinMerge development. This release is not recommended for the production.

Please submit bug reports to our bug-tracker.

### What Is New in 2.15.5 Beta?

#### General

- Add support for very long path and file names (GitHub #87,95,99)
- Enable Ctrl+C shortcut key on the file path bar
- Remove support for old version control system (GitHub #96)
- Improve Options > Color > Differences dialog layout (GitHub #89)
- Improve information and formatting in Help > Configuration reporting (GitHub #92)
- Improve visual layout of Open dialog (GitHub #97)
- Add icon for "New (3 panes)" menu item (GitHub #97)

#### File compare

- Add Window/Split menu item
- Improve handling of last lines in files (GitHub #89,90,93)
- Improve "Visual C++ Loose" filter (GitHub #95)
- BugFix: Crash when saving a file if the active pane is diff detail pane
- BugFix: Crash when pressing Alt+Down key while loading large files
- BugFix: Crash when "mousing over" Plugin Setting context menu if Plugins are disabled
- BugFix: Various problems reading of files > 2GB (GitHub #81)
- BugFix: Selecting files "From MRU list" again works correctly

#### Translations

- Update Italian translation (GitHub #86)
- Update Japanese translation (Bitbucket #3)
- Update Dutch translation
- Update German translation
- Bugfix Spanish translation error (Bitbucket Issue #108)

#### Internals

- Various diffengine and compilation/build fixes (GitHub #89,90,91,92,94)

### What Is New in 2.15.4 Beta?

#### Appearance

- BugFix: Dot icon in a drop-down menu is not drawn correctly

#### File compare

- BugFix: Crash when reading a file in Google Drive File Stream (sf.net#2206)
- BugFix: Crash when removing ghost lines (GitHub #80)
- BugFix: Lines without EOL appears even though it is not the last line
- Add Ctrl++/Ctrl+-(not numpad key) shortcut key to zoom in/out (sf.net#1727)
- Remove 2GB file size limit for 64-bit build (GitHub #81, #82)

#### Folder compare

- Add Pause button to Folder Compare Progress dialog (sf.net#828,#1222,#1237)
- Re-detect the file encoding when opening files (sf.net#2131)

#### Open dialog

- Add Options button to Open dialog
- Add Save Project button to Open dialog

#### Patch generator dialog

- BugFix: File1/File2 fields don't remember manual input (sf.net#1949)

#### Reports

- BugFix: Garbled text was copied to the clipboard when generating a report on the clipboard (sf.net#2200)

#### Plugins

- Add PrediffLineFilter.sct plugin
- Make ignored lines by Prediffer plugin colored

#### Translations

- Update Slovak translation (sf.net#2902)
- Update Portuguese translation (GitHub #84,#85)

#### Internals

- Adapt to VS2017 version 15.6.1 (GitHub #79)

### What Is New in 2.15.3 Beta?

#### File compare

- Fix assertion error when started on Windows XP
- Fix a problem that moved blocks are sometimes shown as normal diff blocks
- Fix a problem that EOL is removed unexpectedly when removing lines included ghost lines
- Fix reverse search to search last line correctly
- Fix infinite loop when replacing ^ (sf.net#2094)
- Fix to show text that contains & on message box, correctly (sf.net#2067)

#### Folder compare

- Fix a problem that unique files are invisible when comparing files using 'Date' compare method
- Remove trailing garbage from a dragged text (Github#75)

#### Patch generator dialog

- Fix a problem that typed-in Context in Generate Patch is not applied (sf.net#2179)

#### Location pane

- Add support for HiDPI screens (Github #54)

#### Plugins

- CompareMSExcelFiles.sct: Add "Compare headers and footers" checkbox to settings dialog (sf.net#2102)

#### Installer

- Remove extra space in installer: " Launch WinMerge" (sf.net#2144)
- Add "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs" section into GPL.rtf (sf.net#2098)

#### Translations

- Add Finnish translation (sf.net#3031)
- Add Sinhala translation (sf.net#3032)
- Update Korean translation (Github #61)
- Update Portuguese translation (GitHub #56-78)
- Update Polish translation (sf.net#2177)
- Update Turkish translation (Bitbucket#85, #86)
- Change the file encodings of all .po files of WinMerge GUI to UTF-8

### What Is New in 2.15.2 Beta?

WinMerge 2.15.2 is a beta release which mainly adds support for experimental 3-way comparison and image comparison.

#### Appearance

- Flatten GUI pane edges
- Partial support for HiDPI (not Per-Monitor DPI Aware)
- Remove splash screen. The splash screen image is now displayed in About dialog

#### Tool bar

- Add "View->Toolbar->Huge" menu item
- Add drop down menu to Options icon
- Add icons for 3-way merge functions

#### Open dialog

- Change window type of Open dialog from modal window to MDI child window
- Add Read-only checkbox to Open dialog
- Add buttons to swap items
- Add the third path combobox for 3-way comparison
- Allow file name patterns like not only *.ext but file*.ext

#### Tab bar

- Make Tabbar reorderable by using drag-and-drop
- Add "Close Other Tabs", "Close Right Tabs" and "Close Left Tabs" menu items to system menu
- Add "Enable Auto Max Width" menu item to Tab Bar context menu
- Show close button when hovering over tabs
- Add icons to each tab

#### Options dialog

- Add "Close Select Files or Folders Dialog on clicking OK button" checkbox to "General" page
- Add "Language" combobox to "General" page and remove Language dialog
- Add "Ignore codepage differences" checkbox to "Compare/General" page
- Remove checkboxes in "Enable multiple compare windows for" group from "General" page (Now always enabled multi compare windows)
- Add "Include Subfolders" checkbox to "Compare/Folder" page
- Add "Automatically expand all subfolders" checkbox to "Compare/Folder" page
- Add "Ignore Reparse Points" checkbox to "Compare/Folder" page
- Add "Number of compare threads" textbox to "Compare/Folder" page
- Add "Compare/Binary" page
- Add "Compare/Image" page
- Add checkboxes whether to use custom colors for text to "Colors/Differences" page
- Add "GitHub/Bitbucket" button to "Colors/Differences" page
- Add "Margin" color button to "Colors/Text" page
- Add "Colors/Markers" page
- Remove "Use stand-alone 7-Zip if available" and "Use local 7-Zip from WinMerge folder" radio button from "Archive Support" page (Now always use local 7-Zip from WinMerge folder)
- Make $file and $linenum parameters available in External editor textbox on "System" page
- Make Custom codepage on "Codepage" page selectable from dropdown list
- Add "Detect codepage for text files using mlang.dll" checkbox to "Codepage" page
- Remove "Include subfolders by default" checkbox from
"Shell Integration" page (ShellExtension now refers to "Include subfolders" checkbox on "Compare/Folder" page or on "Select Files or Folders" dialog)
- Remove "Add Shell menu to context menu" from "Shell Integration" page (WinMerge now always adds shell menu to context menu in Folder window)
- Add "Register shell extension" button to "Shell Integration" page

#### Folder Compare

- Add Multi-thread compare support for Full Contents or Quick Contents method
- Color the background of items in list view
- Restore collapse/expand state of folder tree after re-comparison
- Make comparing window closeable
- Make sub-folder re-comparable
- Display folder items in list view during comparison
- Display the file name currently being compared in progress window
- Add "Parent Folder" menu item in 'Open Left/Middle/Right' menu
- Add "Compare Non-horizontally" menu item to context menu
- Add "Copy items To Clipboard" menu item to context menu
- Add "Swap panes" menu item to View menu
- Add "Auto/Manual Prediffer" menu item to Plugin menu
- Open selected folders in new tab when clicking "Compare" menu item with pressing Ctrl key
- Cleanup Date column alignment (GitHub #25)
- Bugfix: Version column not sorted correctly
- Bugfix: A unique item that is a binary file was not detected as a binary file
- Bugfix: Properly handle 3-way comparison of Binary files (Github #23)
- Bugfix: Use proper font for View>Use Default Font menu item (GitHub #24)

#### File Compare

- Add support for 3-way compare/merge
- Add "Diff Context" menu to View menu to adjust the number of displayed diff context lines
- Add "Split Vertically" menu item to View menu
- Add "Add Synchronization Point" to Merge menu
- Add "Auto/Manual Prediffer" menu item to Plugin menu
- Show the name of the applied plugin in the status bar
- Add shortcut(Ctrl+Alt+E) to open with external editor
- Add Go and Rust highlighter
- Add VHDL syntax highlighter (Bitbucket #2)
- Add C++11 keywords
- Make merge editor window D&Dable
- Highlight the search text and implement Marker
- Highlight the EOL pane in status bar if there is a difference in the EOL of files
- Reload files when another application changes files opened by WinMerge
- Improve in-line diff algorithm
- Bugfix: More on Issue #73 Fixed the -dl -dm and -dr description parameters for conflict files (for both 2 way and 3 way conflict files).(Bitbucket #1)
- Bugfix: Fix Memory Leak with Drop Targets (GitHub #26)

#### Binary Compare

- Install binary file editor (frhed) component again by default
- Make binary file editor undoable

#### Image Compare

- Add image file compare/merge support

#### Reports

- Add "Include File Compare Report" checkbox to "Folder Compare Report" dialog
- Change the encoding of HTML folder compare report from ANSI to UTF-8
- Add icons to the HTML folder compare report
- Change visual style of HTML report

#### Archive Support

- Install 7-zip plugin by default

#### Drag and Drop

- Accept drag&droped files or folders from various places like: Zip folder, FTP folder, Recycle bin, images in Web browser

#### Plugins

- Introduce new plugin type FILE_FOLDER_PACK_UNPACKER which allows unpacking data in a file to multiple files in a folder
- Use FILE_FOLDER_PACK_UNPACKER plugin for decompressing archives
- Add support for unpacker plugin written in VBScript/Javascript.
- Add WinMerge32BitPluginProxy.exe to make 32-bit plugins usable in 64-bit WinMerge
- Rewrite some plugins in VBScript
- Add CompareMSPowerPointFiles.sct plugin
- Add ApplyPatch.sct plugin
- Add SortAscending, SortDescending and ExecFilterCommand menu item to Plugin->Script menu
- Make plugins configurable with settings dialog of each plugin

#### Filters

- Update *.flt files for Visual Studio 2015 and 2017

#### Shell extension

- Display another WinMerge icon in Explorer's context menu when a folder is selected

#### Installer

- 64-bit version of WinMerge is available
- Install plugins by default

#### Translations

- Update Portuguese translation (GitHub #2-17)
- Update Korean translation (GitHub #45)
- Update Traditional Chinese translation (GitHub #53)
- Remove "Language" menu item from View menu (You can specify UI language at Options dialog)

#### Command line

- Incompatible change: The third file path is now treated as a right path for 3-way comparison, not output path Use /o option for ouput path instead
- Add /wm, /dm, /fl, /fm, /fr, /al, /am and /ar option for 3-way comparison

#### Other changes

- Add support for jump list introduced in Windows 7

#### Internals

- Use POCO C++ libraries instead of pcre, expat and scew. They use pcre, expat internally
- Link statically with MFC and VC runtime libraries
- Various compilation/build fixes (GitHub #1,19,21,29,31-33,36-38,42-44,49-52)

### Known Issues

- Old IE version can cause crashes when handling archive files.

  Workaround: If WinMerge crashes when handling archives, consider updating IE to version 6.0 or later.

- Supercopier application causes WinMerge to hang.

  Supercopier application causes WinMerge to not exit properly and leaves WinMerge process hang. See the bug reports:

  - #1976241 the winmerge.exe process doesn't stop itself
  - #1602313 WinMerge stays in tasklist after closing

  Workaround: Disable the Supercopier when using WinMerge.

- Filters only applied when using full compare.

  Line filtering is only applied in folder compare when using Full Contents-compare method.

  If you are using any other compare method, line filters are not applied. Files marked different in folder compare can get status changed to identical when opening them to file compare.

- Unset WinMerge integration from ClearCase

  To remove WinMerge integration, you'll need to edit one file by hand:

  1. Find ClearCase installation folder
     Usually it is something like `C:\Program Files\Rational\ClearCase`
  2. Go to subfolder `lib\mgrs\`
  3. Open file `map` in there to editor program
  4. Comment-out the line starting with "`text_file_delta xcompare`", containing "`WinMergeU.exe`"
  5. Uncomment the line starting with "`text_file_delta xcompare`", containing "`cleardiffmrg.exe`"