Episode 7 – Beyond Compare
This week is an interview with Craig Peterson, the Lead Developer on Scooter Software’s Beyond Compare, one of my favorite utilities. We discuss deveoping on the Linux platform with Kylix, adding Unicode Support pre-Delphi 2009, the new version of Beyond Compare and some tips for using it, plus a whole lot more.
Be sure to listen to the podcast to get your 25% discount code on Beyond compare version 3. Also still good is the RemObjects 20% discount code. Both are valid through the end of October!
Posted on September 29th, 2008 under Audio podCast • Tags: beyond compare, compare, delphi, delphi 2009, discount, kylix, linux, remobjects. • 
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September 29th, 2008 at 4:18 am
I found 3.0 version a bit dissapointing. I compare some cyrillic texts and Beyond Compare “auto” selects the language to Vietnamese and of course don’t show the letters as it should. Then I need to manually select ANSI from the both panels and thus run the compare 3 times which slows my work.
September 29th, 2008 at 5:10 am
Ahh so that’s why there is CRC comparison. Always wondered about that, too. Good to know
Nice interview!
September 29th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Is there a way to use the discount code in Germany? The Scooter Soft website only allows US customers
September 29th, 2008 at 7:12 am
Personally, I’m kind of upset with how visually unattractive the new version’s UI became. I understand that cross-platform development nearly always takes its tax from the app’s visual appearance, but is it worth THAT?
September 29th, 2008 at 8:39 am
@dwrbudr: You can change the default encoding that BC uses. Go to Tools | File Formats and select the Conversion tab for any file format. You can change encoding from Detect to ANSI.
September 29th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Daniel, you can use our ordering site from Germany and use PayPal or a credit card for payment. (There’s a warning page for European customers that explains that we don’t handle VAT, but it doesn’t prevent you from ordering.)
September 29th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Alexander: Can you be more specific about what you don’t like? As Craig mentioned in the interview, we’ve stuck with VCL for the Windows build, so the U/I is not affected at all by being cross-platform.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Really looking forward to hearing this, but can I grumble about the download speed again? 55 minutes to download 23 megabytes…
October 6th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Jim, How about posting the URL’s to the blogs mentioned in the podcast for those who are search challenged.
October 7th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Here are Craig’s favorite blog links:
* The Old New Thing, Raymond Chen, http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/
* The Oracle at Delphi, Allen Bauer, http://blogs.codegear.com/abauer/
* Hallvard Vassbotn, http://hallvards.blogspot.com/
* Micro-ISV, Jan Goyverts, http://www.micro-isv.asia/
* Coding Horror, Jeff Atwood, http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/
Did I get them all?
October 7th, 2008 at 9:46 am
@Richard – I’ll look into the download speed. When I tested it I found it downloaded quite fast. I wonder if it is time of day related, geography related, or network related. Thanks for letting me know.
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I have just tested BC, and I have been disappointed… I am still looking at a good diff/merge tool. Any other idea ?
January 1st, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Monica: Have you tried communicating exactly what you are disappointed about to the BC team? They are very responsive and helpful. Perhaps the features you are looking for are there, but you didn’t find them.
BC3 is such a powerful, useful and easy to use product. It is much better than ‘a good diff/merge tool’.
January 11th, 2009 at 2:16 am
@Tony: In fact, my main concern is about scripting. BC is quite poor. I found another diff/merge tool with Javascript scripting capabilities : ECMerge. I tried the 2.2 Beta version on PC & Mac.
October 3rd, 2009 at 2:21 pm
The coupon code says it’s not valid. I tried both the 25% and the 20% code and doesn’t work.
October 10th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Sorry, the coupon codes expired. This podcast was from September of 2008.
October 11th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
I figured that out later after my post.
I did get a discount still.
Thanks