I am using svn for version control and want to be able to compare 2 revisions of a MS Word doc side-by-side. I am aware of Araxis Merge but this converts the doc to text and compares which is more clever than I need it to be. I would like a tool that would allow me to visually compare the files preserving the formatting, images, etc. that may be present in the doc.
I know MS Word has a compare docs feature using track changes but this requires 2 copies of the document to be present on your drive. I want to directly compare revisions in the svn repository db without having to revert my local copy, change the filename and then compare to another working copy.
Is there any tool (free or commercial) that can do this?
Best Answer
I asked another question on diffing (comparing) files a while back. You might pick some recommendations of from here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1075708/diff-utility-works-for-2-files-how-to-compare-more-than-2-files-at-a-time
Wikipedia always helps as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_comparison_tools
For regular work though i usually end up using vimdiff (and there is a vim for mac). All you do to vimdiff (up to 4 default) files is vim -d file1 file2 file3 or gvim -d file1 file2 file3