Diff and batch-rename tools for xml files

[Alexey Zhebel]

Does H&M have built-in functionality for renaming and diffing topic files?

If not, can you recommend a tool for renaming lots of xml files and a tool to see differences between xml files?

[Tim Green]

Hi Alexey,

Help & Manual doesn't have a built-in renaming or diffing tool. The most common diffing and merging tools on Windows are the free WinMerge, which is actually excellent, and Beyond Compare. Then there are a lot of dedicated XML-oriented tools like Altova Diffdog or Project Merge. You can use pretty much anything for diffing but if you are going to merge it is safer to use a program that really understands XML syntax so that it doesn't mess up the code.

When renaming topic files you need to be aware that if you just rename them you will completely break your project. The TOC will no longer work and all links and references to the renamed topics in your project will be broken. For every file that is renamed, you need a routine that searches all the files in your project for any references to the old name and updates those as well...

[Alexey Zhebel]

I found that Total Commander is able to do diffing and multi-renaming.

As for renaming, it would be nice to add a Topic ID option in the Find Where dropdown list of the Find & Replace window. This would solve the problem of breaking all the links when renaming topic files. Is it possible in a future release?

[Tim Green]

Hi Alexey,

I found that Total Commander is able to do diffing and multi-renaming.

You can do diffing with Total Commander but it wouldn't use it for anything except simple comparisons. Its diffing algorithms are quite simple and they fall down badly as soon as you have files with text blocks that have been moved around. The Compare plugin in Notepad++ is radically better than TC's diffing, for example.

As for renaming, it would be nice to add a Topic ID option in the Find Where dropdown list of the Find & Replace window. This would solve the problem of breaking all the links when renaming topic files. Is it possible in a future release?

This is theoretically possible but for the time being we have no plans to add it. We have discussed it several times and we feel that the potential for seriously damaging your project is too high. In addition to internal damage, changing IDs also breaks any external references to topics in your projects, such as calls from your, links to WebHelp from other websites and indexes of your help in search engines like Google.