Settings

DeltaWalker Classic adapts to the way you work. Some of that happens on its own; the rest is a click or two away, in the Settings window.

What happens on its own: DeltaWalker Classic adds an entry to its comparison history for every comparison you complete, so that you can later run it again the same way. It also remembers the layout, position and size of the main window, and the comparison windows that were open when you quit, so the next time you start it, it looks the way you left it.

What is a click or two away: the Settings window, with everything from the speed, accuracy and output of the comparison algorithms to the theme, colors, fonts and keyboard shortcuts of the application.

Opening the Settings window

• Choose DeltaWalker Classic > Settings… or press Cmd+,. On Windows and Linux, choose Edit > Preferences… or press Ctrl+,.
• Click Settings on the main toolbar.

Either way, the window opens on the tab and the page you left it at. The first time, it opens on the Application tab. If you left it on the tab of a comparison that is no longer active, it opens on the New Comparisons tab, at the same page.

Apply and Close applies the changes made on all the tabs together; Cancel, or the Esc key, closes the window without applying them. Restore Defaults sets the settings of the page showing back to their defaults. The Back and Forward buttons at the top of the page step through the pages you have looked at, and the Help button opens the help for the page showing.

The three tabs

The Settings window has up to three tabs. Each keeps its own changes, so you can look at one while you are in the middle of changing another.

Application

The Application tab holds the settings of DeltaWalker Classic itself and of the way it looks. They apply to the application as a whole, across comparisons.

• General: the theme, the memory DeltaWalker Classic may use, what it starts with, how much it remembers, alerts and sounds, software updates, and logging. Under it: Keys, Content Types, SCM Integration and, in the Mac App Store edition only, Trusted Paths in place of SCM Integration.
• Appearance: scrolling, and under it the colors and fonts and the look of folder comparisons, text comparisons and image comparisons.
• Text Editing: how text files are edited, and under it the text editors.

New Comparisons

When you create a new comparison, it starts with a snapshot of the settings on the New Comparisons tab. From then on, those are the settings of that comparison: changing the New Comparisons settings does not affect existing comparisons, and changing the settings of a comparison does not affect the New Comparisons settings. The first page of the tab is headed Default Settings for New Comparisons.

• All Comparisons: how files are compared, and under it the text filters and the remote connections (not in DeltaWalker Classic Free).
• Folder Comparisons: how folders are compared, and under it their filters.

The active comparison

When a text or folder comparison is active, the Settings window has a third tab, named after that comparison: by the name you gave it or, failing that, by the names of what it compares, for example report.txt ↔ report.txt. It has the same pages as the New Comparisons tab, but what you change on them applies to that comparison alone. A text comparison has no folder pages. The tab is not available while the comparison is running. Image and other kinds of comparison have no settings of their own.

Every comparison you complete is recorded in the comparison history with everything needed to run it again the same way: its settings, the paths of what it compares and, for a remote comparison, the details of the remote connection, such as your credentials.

Finding a setting

Type in the Search… field above the list of pages to find a page by its name or by the settings on it: scroll, intro alert or ignore case, for instance. Every word you type has to begin a word of the page’s name or of the label of one of its settings, in any order. The list shows the pages found on the tab you are on, those with a match of their own in bold, and the page showing is the first of them, with the settings found highlighted. When nothing is found on the tab, the list tells you which of the other tabs have matches. Press Return to move from the field to the list, and clear the field to see every page again.