(I read the manual, did a search of the archives for "diff FileMerge" and read all hits before writing this email, and I have also tried a couple of the Diff commands in the Subversion bundle.)

I am wondering if, either as part of Allan's documentation effort, or as some bundle maintainer's efforts, a simple "How to Find Differences Using TextMate" document could be written. Because I confess, I am at sea as to how to get a useful, usable diff of two similar documents.

My gold standard for usable differences is (as many of the list postings discussed) BBEdit. In particular, it has a menu command, "Compare Two Front Documents", which provides a highly usable interface to locate, review, and merge/modify the differences between two open documents. FileMerge, while flawed in some important ways, also provides a reasonably useful way of interacting with two files. (The diff output of the Subversion bundle is not suitable to my group's needs.)

For me, it's *critical* that a usable diff command *not* require either document to be under revision control. I am the first person in my group to be using any form of revision control more sophisticated than DreamWeaver's simple file locking. Subversion is being used only on new projects which I am in charge of, which is a very small percentage of the stuff I'm working on, so it'll be a good while before I can count on having stuff in Subversion.

Perhaps this suggestion will be taken as rude (and it won't be useful for non-BBEdit converts who don't have a BBEdit license), but it would be perfectly acceptable for a TextMate differences command to simply pass along the two file references to BBEdit's command line differences program, bbdiff, if the process would allow me to resolve my differences there and have the results saved back into my open documents in TextMate. A more universal version might use FileMerge instead of bbdiff.

Last, an offer: If there is an acceptable differences command already, and someone will write up a quick list of the steps to use it ala the "Compare Two Front Documents" command, I will write up a complete tutorial, complete with screenshots, etc., suitable for the complete newbie (such as myself, and my co-workers).

I'm a good technical writer, by way of credentials, here are some URLs to Mac OS X documentation I've written:

* PGP Desktop Manual Proxy Settings: http://aldoblog.com/blog/493

* Getting Started with m0n0wall: http://www.aldosoft.com/docs/m0n0wall-getting-started.html

* A whole series of articles covering audiobooks on iTunes and the iPod: http://aldoblog.com/audiobooks/

So, I'll commit to writing some quality docs for the wiki covering a differences command, if someone will point me in the direction of a differences command that is useful for my (and my co-workers') needs.

Thanks!