What’s New in Version 2.0

• New product name: Diffoniq (formerly WDiff32) — settings and licenses from a WDiff32 installation are picked up automatically
• Full Unicode support (UTF-8/UTF-16 files, international filenames)
• Archive comparison beyond ZIP: 7-Zip, RAR, tar (also compressed), CAB, ISO
• Renamed archives are recognized by their content, not just the file extension
• Nested archives (an archive inside another archive) can be opened and compared like a subfolder, to any depth
• Accented characters in file names inside legacy ZIP archives (written without Unicode names by older tools) now display correctly
• Rename and move detection in directory comparison
• Converter pipeline: compare PDF, Word, SQLite, image metadata and other foreign formats as text via user-configured external converters (pdftotext, pandoc, sqlite3, ExifTool, …) — rule table under Options > Converters…, converted views are marked and read-only, results are cached, and a failing converter falls back to the normal binary comparison with a clear hint
• Folder synchronization: the File > Synchronize... dialog previews and executes a mirror or update sync straight from the directory comparison on screen (both directions, Recycle-Bin deletions, cancelable progress), and the command line (/sync) does the same headlessly, built for the Task Scheduler — dry run by default, renamed files are renamed instead of recopied, and the hash cache makes repeated --content runs almost free
• Comparison reports: turn the comparison on screen into a file you can hand over — File > Export Report... writes a self-contained HTML page (colored, printable, dark-mode aware), plain text, or JSON for scripts, for a folder, an archive or a single file comparison. Both roots and the options that were in effect are recorded in the header, entries inside an archive stay marked as such, and identical items can be counted instead of listed. Headlessly, /report ... --out <file> does the same for scheduled runs — together with /sync, a nightly job that leaves a result on your desk. A report or printout from an unlicensed evaluation copy says so in its footer
• Saved configurations in the file-selection dialog: store both paths and both exclude filters under a name, shown as a list — click to load a configuration, double-click to start the comparison at once. The list highlights the configuration that matches the current fields and flags it as (modified) once you change a parameter; the most recently used entry stays on top
• Use as another program’s diff viewer (git difftool, TortoiseGit/TortoiseSVN, Total Commander, WinSCP): started with two paths, Diffoniq opens the comparison straight away — the evaluation reminder does not interrupt the calling tool, neither on the way in nor on the way out. The new /read-only switch locks editing, saving and Synchronize for one run, for hosts that hand over temporary copies; /read-only-left and /read-only-right lock a single side, for the common case where only one of the two paths is a temporary copy. /no-backup and /backup decide for one run whether saving keeps a .BAK copy — useful when the host compares into a version-controlled working tree. Started this way, Esc closes Diffoniq, because there is no directory comparison to go back to
• Exclude pattern editor: the … button next to each Exclude field opens a resizable editor with one pattern per line — easier than a long semicolon-separated string
• Wildcard filters reworked: a file mask (e.g. *.cpp) no longer stops the subdirectory scan, several masks can be combined (*.cpp;*.hpp), and exclude patterns now work case-insensitively and also inside archives; directory scans with filters can be cancelled
• Third-Party Software overview: the open-source components with their versions and licenses, and a Third-Party Notices button in the About box that opens the full license texts
• Check for Updates: a manual command in the Help menu and a quiet once-a-day automatic check (switchable via Help > Automatic Update Check) tell you when a newer version is available and open the download page on request — Diffoniq never downloads or installs anything by itself, and the check transmits no data beyond the request
• Persistent content-hash cache — a repeat comparison of the same large tree finishes in a fraction of the first run’s time
• Background hashing adapts its thread count to the storage: comparisons that involve a network share automatically use more parallel requests, because there it is response time rather than bandwidth that sets the limit; an explicit BgdThreads setting overrides the automatic choice
• Background content compare with per-row progress display; Esc stops it, the pairs not reached stay marked as unverified
• Directory comparison scans both sides in parallel — and within each side, the folder tree is now enumerated by a parallel worker pool, which especially speeds up network shares and large trees; the progress dialog moves smoothly through every phase — including sorting and matching, which used to sit still
• New status bar: comparison tally, compare-mode badge (Quick/Hash/Byte), difference-block and line position, and scan progress with a live hash-cache balance. Colour-coded counts, a segmented layout with dividers and a badge pill make the whole line readable at a glance; right-click it to copy its text.
• Two-line pane header: the chosen path on top with the file name standing out from it, and the file’s details below — size (readable and exact bytes), line count, encoding and line terminator, image dimensions and format, or the file/folder counts of a compared directory. When the two sides differ in encoding or line endings, those are highlighted so you see it at once. Numbers follow your regional settings.
• Reorganized menus: the display toggles (Hide Matching Areas, Line Numbers, Show Inline Differences) moved into the View menu, License and Description now live under Help, and commands that don’t apply to the current view are greyed out
• Standard keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+O opens the file selection (was F3), Ctrl+S saves (was F2), F5 refreshes (Left/Right file view moved to Ctrl+1/Ctrl+2), F3/Shift+F3 find next/previous, and Ctrl+W / Ctrl+P / Alt+F4 close, print and exit
• Similarity-based line alignment inside change blocks
• Inserted or deleted blocks align with natural boundaries: when several placements of a change block are equivalent, Diffoniq now picks the one starting at a blank line, a comment start or an unindented line — an inserted function shows as one block including its leading comment, instead of beginning in the middle of the previous comment
• Binary (non-text) file pairs are compared byte by byte in one quick pass and shown as a summary — the file size, plus the offset of the first difference or, for files that match to the last byte, their content hash — instead of a slow line diff of raw bytes
• Go to Line command (Ctrl+G)
• Find reworked: every match is marked in the panes, the dialog shows the match count (“3 / 17”) and steps out of the way of the found line, Find Previous (Shift+F3) joins Find Next (F3), plus a “Wrap around” option that continues the search from the other end of the file and a working “Match whole word only” option. With the dialog closed the status bar keeps the position in view (Find "Marker": 3 / 400), and Esc removes the match highlighting
• Ctrl+mouse wheel scrolls a whole screen at a time
• Press F1 in the Comparison and Directory options dialogs for help on the focused setting; both dialogs also have a Help button that opens their help page directly
• Help improvements: search results show context snippets with highlighted matches and support arrow-key navigation, the contents tree highlights the current topic, every page ends with Previous/Next links, and the help follows the Windows dark mode and prints cleanly
• Version 1.x command lines keep working: attached switch values such as /t4 or /gs- are accepted again (see Command Line Arguments)
• A command line scripts can rely on: every switch may be spelled with -, -- or /; --version and --help answer in a message box; and anything unknown is rejected with a message and exit code 3 — never a silent success (see Scripting and AI Assistants)
• Report and sync log files are written atomically: the file named by --out or --log appears under its final name only when it is complete, so a script that waits for the file can never read a half-written result
• An asterisk in the header marks a file with unsaved edits
• Saving keeps the backup under the full file name (notes.txt.BAK instead of notes.BAK), so test.h and test.c no longer share one backup; the backup can be switched off in the File Comparison Options, and a failed backup asks before saving without one
• Undo (Ctrl+Z) is now multi-level, also restores deleted lines, and greys out when there is nothing to undo; a separate Redo (Ctrl+Y) re-applies undone edits
• Printing uses the standard Windows print dialog: choose the target printer — the one you picked comes up preselected — a page range, and the number of copies where the printer driver offers them (drivers that write to a file usually do not); cancelling a print in progress now discards the job cleanly. Pages show “Page n of m” and the print date in the footer, the job is listed in the printer queue under the compared file names, and a dark screen color scheme falls back to the standard colors on paper
• MSI installer; single self-contained executable — also available as a portable ZIP that runs without installation, e.g. from a USB stick
• New offline licensing (signed license files, no activation)

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