RTF files

[rjbull]

ExamDiff Pro has plug-ins for various formats including Microsoft Word files, but I want to diff RTF files (produced by a very old version of Crystal Reports). ExamDiff Pro shows all the formatting stuff, like so:

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Arial Unicode MS;}{\f1\fswiss\fcharset0 Arial Narrow;}}{\colortbl;
\red0\green0\blue0;\red0\green0\blue255;\red228\green228\blue228;}{\info{\title }{\author Crystal Reports}{\doccomm Powered By Crystal}{\company Crystal Decisions}}

blah blah etcetera. Please, is there a way for ExamDiff Pro to show the differences between two RTF files ignoring all that font/formatting dross? I didn't spot a relevant plug-in.

Thanks...

[psguru]

You may want to use catdoc.exe as a plug-in (it's shipped as one of ExamDiff Por plug-ins, and it's in the same directory where XLS to CSV is located). Use the same input parameter as the latter ($INPUTFILEPATH).

[rjbull]

Thanks... that works, with minor changes:

Code: Select all

Name:           Rich Text Format [installed]
Extensions:     rtf
Application:    cmd /c C:\junk\EXAMDI~1\Plug-Ins\catdoc\catdoc.exe
Arguments:      $INPUTFILEPATH_SHORT

I.e. I had to use SFNs, maybe because the path had spaces in it. Otherwise, ExamDiff Pro reported that files that were obviously different (different sizes) were identical, presumably because catdoc hadn't run, so there was nil output from both files for ExamDiff Pro to compare.

I found another little DOS program that quickly and efficiently converts RTF to text via the VDE DOS text editor http://short.stop.home.att.net/vde/vde.htm#vdemenu, Pavel Zampach's RTF2VDE http://www.volny.cz/zampach/hplx/page1.html. The drawback is that it needs both input and output files specified and doesn't run as a filter, so I would have had to invoke it via a batch file.

[psguru]

The drawback is that it needs both input and output files specified

BTW, you can use both by specifying both $INPUTFILEPATH and $OUTPUTFILEPATH (look at the PDF to Text plug-in).

[rjbull]

Thanks again. I looked at the catdoc Web site, and it looks to me as if catdoc is a DOS program. That would explain the requirement for short file names.

Someone on DonationCoder - message here http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/ ... #msg150558 - mentioned this:

xdocdiff WinMerge Plugin

http://freemind.s57.xrea.com/xdocdiffPl ... index.html

What's this?
This is a plugin for WinMerge (an Open Source diff tool).
This plugin is tested with WinMerge 2.8.6, the latest version on release date.
May not work well with other versions of WinMerge.
With this plugin, you can compare these files.

.rtf Rich Text
.docx/.docm Microsoft WORD 2007(OOXML)
.xlsx/.xlsm Microsoft Excel 2007(OOXML)
.pptx/.pptm Microsoft PowerPoint 2007(OOXML)
.doc
Microsoft WORD ver5.0/95/97/2000/XP/2003
.xls Microsoft Excel ver5.0/95/97/2000/XP/2003
.ppt Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP/2003
.sxw/.sxc/.sxi/.sxd OpenOffice.org
.odt/.ods/.odp/.odg Open Document
.wj2/wj3/wk3/wk4/123 Lotus 123
.wri Windows3.1 Write
.pdf Adobe PDF
.mht Web Archive
.eml Exported files from OutlookExpress

Word and Excel diff plugins are bundled with WinMerge.
But those plugins require Word or Excel to compare files.
xdocdiff Plugin does not require Word or Excel, and it's faster to show differences.

Provided under BSD license.

I haven't downloaded it, let alone tried to see if it would work with ExamDiff Pro, but it might be worth a look for some new and different formats, and a lot of formats in one place.

[psguru]

If you try it, please let us know whether it worked for you.