Editing

To reach this options page, select View > Options... > Text Comparisons > Editing

The controls on this page are used to control the behaviour of the editing panels in the file comparison window.

Allow editing in read-only files

By default, Merge does not allow editing of read-only files. If you want to perform editing prior to saving the file under a new name, then you can check this option to enable editing.

Expand tabs to # spaces

Check this option and fill in the entry field if you want Merge to expand tab characters to spaces within compared files. This only affects how the files are displayed; the original tab characters are preserved when merged files are saved.

Tab key inserts tab characters instead of cycling focus

This option alters the behaviour of the Tab key in the file editing panels.

• If checked the Tab key will insert tab characters into the editing panels or, if a selection is set, Tab and Shift+Tab will indent and unindent the selection, respectively.
• If unchecked the Tab key will cycle focus around the controls in the file comparison window. In this case, you can use Ctrl+T to insert tab characters into the editing panels.

In either case, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U can be used to indent and unindent the selection.

Block indent/un-indent by # spaces

This control contains the number of spaces by which lines of text will be indented or unindented when you select some lines and press Ctrl+I or Ctrl+U in a file editing panel.

Use Ctrl and cursor keys to perform merging operations

When this option is checked, you can use the cursor keys in combination with the Ctrl key to perform merging operations. If this option is unchecked, you can use the primary keyboard shortcuts for the same operations.

Note When this option is checked, you lose the ability to navigate left and right in word boundaries, and to scroll up and down without moving the editing cursor.

Automatically reload externally modified files

Check this option to make Merge check whether open files have been modified by other editors. When Merge finds that a file has been changed on disk, it will be reloaded if it has not been modified within Merge.

Note: On some file systems (for example, when Merge has loaded files using the ftp virtual file system plugin), it can be time consuming (or impossible) for Merge to check whether a file has been modified. Merge will not check for modified files on these filesystems.