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From: lim@iris.ucdavis.edu (Lloyd Lim)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: "Word Processor Format Libary" from Claris?
Message-ID: <7656@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 6 Sep 90 01:04:55 GMT
References: <1990Sep5.175728.1895@midway.uchicago.edu>
Sender: usenet@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu
Reply-To: lim@iris.ucdavis.edu (Lloyd Lim)
Organization: U.C. Davis - Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Lines: 23

In article <1990Sep5.175728.1895@midway.uchicago.edu> gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes:
>On a related note: he may want me to write a word comparing app similar to
>CompareRite or DocuComp (he likes those, but sez they mess with the file
>format, such as styles, or something like that.  I don't know exactly what he
>means, since he's gone).  He claims "The process of comparing two files to
>produce a difference file is very simple to program and is often an exercise in
>introductory programming texts."  Is this an accurate assessment of the
>difficulty involved in reproducing something like either of the two commercial
>programs above?  Somehow I'm skeptical.

This is not quite true.  It is easy to produce a difference file.  It is hard
to produce an "optimal" difference file.  The difficulty lies in the fact that
when you have more than a few differences between two documents, there are
many ways to specify the changes.  There seems to be a fair amount of research
in this area and I know one professor who is currently working in this area.
I forget what the various complexity measures are for various aspects of this
problem.  I think I remember hearing that DocuComp is actually quite
sophisticated internally.

+++
Lloyd Lim     Internet: lim@iris.ucdavis.edu (128.120.57.20)
              Compuserve: 72647,660
              US Mail: 146 Lysle Leach Hall, U.C. Davis, Davis, CA 95616