So, your collegue commited a new revision of a LaTeX document into your version
control system of choice and you want to quickly spot the changes?
That is no easy task with the standard unix diff command
as it is used by, say, svn diff: changes in indentation
and line wrapping are all shown as differences.
For example, a collegue might have reformatted a paragraph that has
been a single line into multiple lines. Then, svn diff
will basically give no more information than "this paragraph has
changed" and the real changes are invisible. I compare here the
results of various diff programs, from worst to best, where all three
have been ordered to ignore changes in white space, if possible.
 |
| KDiff3 |
 |
| Diffuse |
 |
| VimDiff |
 |
| Meld |
 |
| Emacs |
I would probably call it a tie between KDiff3,
Diffuse, and VimDiff. Things clearly become better with Meld, which
shows changes more fine-grained. Obviously, Emacs wins. To obtain this
result with Emacs diff, just open a file that is under version control
(like SVN or CVS) in Emacs. Then, enter M-x ediff-revision
RET and follow Emacs' instructions. Then, press n
or p in the Ediff control window to highlight the changes
in the next or previous block.