pkordel / python-wikeddiff

Python port of the wikEdDiff JavaScript library

Python-wikEdDiff

WikEdDiff is a visual inline-style difference engine with block move support.

The original wikEdDiff is an improved JavaScript diff library that returns html/css-formatted new text version with highlighted deletions, insertions, and block moves. It is also available as a MediaWiki extension, which is a one-to-one synced port with changes and fixes applied to both versions.

• JavaScript library (mirror): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cacycle/diff
• JavaScript online tool: http://cacycle.altervista.org/wikEd-diff-tool.html
• MediaWiki extension: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:wikEdDiff

Python-wikEdDiff is a port of the original JavaScript library to Python. There were no changes to the algorithm, so all credits go to the original author, Cacycle.

Features

WikEdDiff applies a word-based algorithm that uses unique words as anchor points to identify matching text and moved blocks (Paul Heckel: A technique for isolating differences between files. Communications of the ACM 21(4):264 (1978)).

Additional features:

• Visual inline style, changes are shown in a single output text
• Block move detection and highlighting
• Resolution down to characters level
• Unicode and multilingual support
• Stepwise split (paragraphs, lines, sentences, words, characters)
• Recursive diff
• Optimized code for resolving unmatched sequences
• Minimization of length of moved blocks
• Alignment of ambiguous unmatched sequences to next line break or word border
• Clipping of unchanged irrelevant parts from the output (optional)
• Fully customizable
• Text split optimized for MediaWiki source texts

Notable differences between the Python port and the original JavaScript version:

• The HTML formatter has been split from the main WikEdDiff class into a separate submodule, along with corresponding settings from the WikEdDiffConfig class.
• Added an ANSI color formatter and a console demo script (diff.py).

Installation

pip install git+git://github.com/lahwaacz/python-wikeddiff.git

License

The Python port (python-wikeddiff) is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3.0 (see LICENSE).