In order to merge independant HTML changes, I'm looking for recomendations for a 3-way comparison / merge library for HTML. The common 3-way text merge algorithms perform poorly because they do not understand the tree like structure of HTML and XML. Of course, such a library must understand the looser syntax of HTML, i.e. tags are not always closed. My platform is .Net.
views:
118answers:
2
A:
A simple google search offered up: Differ. I've never used it so I can't vouch for the quality of that :-)
Joel Martinez
2008-09-15 18:44:00
Differ does not seem to diff HTML and XML in a tree fashion - just lines, same old stuff diff does ;)
Daren Thomas
2008-09-15 18:49:25
+1
A:
You could also just go cheep: Run the files through tidy and then compare. This will result in similar structures, where new / deleted children will show up with traditional diff tools. It breaks down on removal / addition of surrounding nodes - good luck on solving that one...
Also, the XML Notepad (sorry, couldn't find a link that works on microsoft.com) by Microsoft can compare XML files and does this in a tree based fashion.
Daren Thomas
2008-09-15 18:45:55