Re: ediff feature request: diffing line by line

[Carlo Traverso]

I had missed ediff-regions-wordwise and ediff-windows-wordwise, that
solve a lot of my problems; however these three enhancements would
help:

1 - switching from ediff-buffers to ediff-regions-wordwise: a key
could be defined to select the current ediff regions in both
buffers and enter an ediff-regions-wordwise on them; the same for
ediff-windows-wordwise. This is currently possible, but not with one
key (this should be extremely easy to implement).

2 - the highlighting scheme should be revised, since entering
ediff-regions-wordwise from ediff-buffers removes highlighting from
the current word (i.e. the current region in ediff and the current
word in ediff-regions-wordwise are highlited in the same color...)
ediff-windows-wordwise inside of ediff-buffers is even worse....
(this should be very easy too)

3 - enhancing ediff-regions-wordwise (ediff-windows-wordwise) allowing
to discover and reconcile whitespace "substantial" differences: I
consider "substantial" these differences:

- additional blank lines
- space between words vs no space between words (e.g. "one=1" vs "one = 1"

The amount of whitespace (e.g. "  " vs " ") or the type (space, tab,
newline) is inessential (but two consecutive newlines is not the same
as one newline...)

(I am uncertain about space at the beginning of a line...)

----

Before sending this message (after composing it) I have compiled emacs
21.1.1 (I was using 20.7.1); unfortunately, I have to say that the new
version of ediff-*-wordwise is worse for my purpose:

in this example, in the old version there were two differences:


Que la dont je viens d outremer
               ^^^^^  ^
Que la dont je vieng d'outremer


that have collapsed in one larger difference:


Que la dont je viens d outremer
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Que la dont je vieng d'outremer

and of course here I have to choose one from each version...

Apparently the definition of "wordwise" has changed; maybe, what I
would like to have is an "ediff-*-characterwise" with the possibility
to switch from one "ediff-*-*wise" to the other.

There is a small shift in behaviour as far as point 2 of the above
enhancements is concerned, with a small (but non substantial)
improvement.

Carlo