[EMAIL PROTECTED] on 02/17/2000 10:47:34 AM
>>--- Forwarded mail from [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>I'll agree with you though if you say that there may not be any sensible
>>method to automatically merge certain file-formats and keep the syntactic
>>and semantic format of the file "correct"...
>
>That is exactly what I meant. I had assumed that the definition of "working
>merge tool" included the notion that what it produced would have the
>following properties:
>
>1. The output is meaningful, i.e. it is understandable as valid source code
> by the tool(s) that interpret its content and that of the contributors.
>2. The output contains elements from the contributors. Such elements may be
> intermixed, possibly under the direction of the user.
>3. The output has the proper semantics as defined by the user.
There will never be a generic merge tool because of the above requirements (I
mean, how will a generic merge tool know how a particular tool interprets
source?) However, in an ideal world (which I know we don't live in), tool
vendors will ship diff/merge tools with their tools or open source diff/merge
can exist. It'd be great if such tools can be written for VB for example.
OTOH, there are other tools which I think can never have diff/merge algorithms
(image editors come to mind). For these tools, I think 'false' would be a good
merge tool.
Noel
