Buttons and Other Controls

Buttons and Other Controls
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Figure 3.5. The Toolbar

Below the menu bar lies the tool bar. This provides easy access to the most commonly used tools, which are

Open accesses the file-open dialog. What else?
Save saves any changes you have made.
Reload discards any changes you have made in TortoiseMerge and reloads the files from disk.
Undo implements a multi-level undo, allowing you to reverse any changes you have made within TortoiseMerge.
Prev/Next Difference jumps directly to the next point where the files differ. This saves scrolling through all the unchanged parts of the file.
When you do this in 2-pane diff mode, the detail bar at the bottom of the screen will show you the inline differences for the first line, regardless of where the mouse is hovering.
Prev/Next Conflict jumps directly to the next point where the file differences are in conflict and need to be resolved.
Use Theirs/Use Mine selects whether to use a block from the left or the right pane. Refer to the next section for more information about editing changes and conflicts.
Theirs before Mine/Mine before Theirs is used when you want to combine changes in a conflicted file. Refer to the next section for more information about editing changes and conflicts.
Mark as Resolved When you have resolved all the conflicts in a file and saved the changes, you can mark it as resolved from within TortoiseMerge, rather than going back to explorer and marking as resolved from there.
Show Whitespaces toggles the option to display space and tab characters as symbols so you can distinguish white space changes.
Wrap long lines toggles the word wrapping at the end of the views. If turned on, long lines which would normally extend beyond the view border are wrapped around, i.e., one long line is split into several lines.
Inline Diff Word-wise toggles the method used to display inline diffs. In word-wise mode, when a character is changed, the whole word is highlighted. In char-wise mode, each individual changed character is highlighted.
Word-wise is the default and in most cases it works better. For example if you change a variable name, the whole name is highlighted in word-wise mode, whereas in char-wise mode you tend to get a mess of added and deleted characters which doesn't make much sense. However, some content does not resolve neatly into words, for example a hex file, and in that case, char-wise display works better.
Compare whitespaces shows all changes in indentation and inline whitespace as added/removed lines (which is how Subversion treats such changes).
Ignore whitespace changes hides changes which are due solely to a change in the amount or type of whitespace, e.g. changing the indentation or changing tabs to spaces. Adding whitespace where there was none before, or removing a whitespace completely is still shown as a change.
Ignore all whitespaces hides all whitespace-only changes.
Switch View selects between one-pane and two-pane view. Disabled in 3-pane view.
Switch Left and Right View In 2-pane view, swaps the left and right windows. When you are comparing a file in 2 different trees, as opposed to 2 revisions of the same file, TortoiseSVN does not know which one should go in the left pane as the “original/base” version. If it gets this wrong, you can change it to make viewing easier.
Show/Hide Patch List When TortoiseMerge has a patch list, this button allows you to hide it (so you can see both windows), or show it (so you can review the file list).
Collapse collapses unchanged regions to a single line, leaving only the changed areas and minimal context. You can expand the collapsed areas by double clicking on the collapse line, but you cannot then re-collapse them unless you reload the file.
Settings takes you to TortoiseMerge's settings dialog.
Help opens the TortoiseMerge help file, of course.

On the left side of the window is a locator bar. This provides a quick visual reference as to where the changes lie within the file. The bar has three columns. The left column refers to the left pane, the right column to the right pane, and the centre column to the bottom pane (if present). In one-pane view only the left column is used. The locator bar can also be used as a scroll bar to scroll all the windows simultaneously.

If you double click on a word then every occurrence of that word will be highlighted throughout the document, both in the main panes and the locator bar. Double click on the word again to remove the highlighting.

If you click in the left margin, or if you triple click within a line, that whole line will be selected.

Below the bottom window is the status bar. This shows the number of lines added and deleted in Theirs and Mine, and the number of unresolved conflicts remaining. You can also see which line-ending style is in use, what encoding (ASCII, UTF-8, etc) is assumed by TortoiseMerge, and whether there is a byte-order-mark (BOM) present in UTF-8 files. The left side of the status bar is used to display hints when you hover the mouse over a control.