Extension Options

The options for the extension can be accessed by selecting Tools > Options from the toolbar and navigating to the DeltaXML branch. The options panel allows you to configure the appearance of your result document and to set up the way the comparison takes place.

Deleted Text Options

This section allows you to change the font color, weight, style, decoration and background color used to mark deleted text within the result document.

Added Text options

This section allows you to change the font color, weight, style, decoration and background color used to mark added text within the result document.

Image changes

Changes to images are highlighted using a colored border on the frame holding the image. This section allows you to change the colors used for the image borders. The "Ignore Image Changes" check box allows you to ignore any images that are modified; added and deleted images are still highlighted.

Empty Changed Paragraphs

If empty paragraphs are added or deleted, it can be difficult to identify them as such. You can optionally set a background color for these paragraphs to make them easier to see.

Convert lists

Due to the way the comparison works, results are more accurate when list items are first converted into paragraphs. Any numbers or bullets on the list item are included in the paragraph, as well as any indentation. This option is best left ticked, however, if you wish the result to contain lists rather than paragraphs, untick it.

Ignore carriage return changes

When this option is ticked, adding or deleting a carriage return to split or merge paragraphs causes no change to be shown (unless other text changes are made). This produces a much cleaner result but may take slightly longer to compare the documents. Unticking the option may speed the comparison slightly but will potentially produce larger amounts of change.

Troubleshooting

Out of memory

The extension uses a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to run the comparison. If you are comparing large documents, the JVM may run out of memory. It is possible to allocate more memory to the JVM that OpenOffice uses by following these steps:

1. Select Tools > Options from the toolbar
2. Select the Java options pane underneath the OpenOffice.org options branch
3. Press the 'Parameters..." button and enter -Xmx1g (without the quotes) in the Java start parameter box
4. Press the 'Assign' button and the option should appear in the Assigned start parameters panel.

N.B. Entering -Xmx1g will assign 1GB memory to the JVM. You can allocate more, but some platforms with a 32bit JVM are limited to a maximum of around 2GB.

ODT Compare API Features

DeltaXML ODT Compare is available as a Java API for integration with a content management system (CMS). This Java API allows full control of all the parameter settings rather than the limited control available via the OpenOffice.org Extension. The table below shows the features and control that these two products provide.

Feature	Description	API	Extension
Added Text Properties	Allows the user to set the font color, weight, style, decoration and background color of added text	Full Control	Partial Control. Limited color choice.
Deleted Text Properties	Allows the user to set the font color, weight, style, decoration and background color of deleted text	Full Control	Partial Control. Limited color choice.
Image Changes	Allows the user to set the border color of added/deleted/modified images. Image modifications can optionally be ignore completely.	Full Control	Partial Control. Limited color choice.
Object Changes	Allows the user to set the background color of added/deleted/modified objects. Object modifications can optionally be ignore completely.	Full Control	Not included
Empty Paragraph Changes	Allows the user to set the background color of added/deleted empty paragraphs or choose to ignore them completely.	Full Control	Partial Control. Limited color choice.
List Conversion	Allows the user to set whether or not to convert lists into paragraphs in order to enable list numbering changes to be highlighted.	Full Control	Full Control
Ignore Carriage Returns	Allows the user to ignore changes caused by paragraph-level splits (i.e. adding a carriage return in the middle of a text section)	Full Control	Partial Control. Carriage returns in tables cannot be ignored
Document Keying	Allows the user to control paragraph and table alignment between the two documents	Full Control	Not included
Change granularity	Allows the user to control the level of detail at which changes are shown. For example, rather than produce a paragraph showing a difficult to read sequence of added and deleted words, the user can choose to output this as a deleted paragraph followed by an added paragraph.	Full Control	Not included
Whitespace changes	Allows the user to specify the behaviour when a whitespace-only change is detected.	Full Control	Not included
Modified table output	Allows the user to control whether or not multiple copies of a structurally changed table are output.	Full Control	Not included
Empty paragraph removal	Due to pagination changes in the result document, empty paragraphs that appear before page breaks can cause the result to contain empty pages. This setting allows the user to remove these empty paragraphs from the result.	Full Control	Not included