Text Orbit Compare

Text Orbit Compare is a native C desktop application for inspecting two text documents side by side. Version 2 restores the original Python/Tkinter project as a fast, portable and learner-friendly GUI.

Mission controls

• Open, paste, edit or drag-and-drop two documents
• Line-aligned comparison with changed, added, removed and matching statistics
• Ignore case or normalize whitespace before comparison
• Show only changes and search across the result stream
• Export a readable text report
• Dark and light themes, keyboard shortcuts and built-in help
• Native file dialogs and responsive resizable layout
• C11 comparison engine separated from the graphical interface

Install

Download the archive for your system from the latest release.

System	Archive	Start
Windows x64	Text-Orbit-Compare-Windows-x64.zip	TextOrbitCompare/TextOrbitCompare.exe
Linux x64	Text-Orbit-Compare-Linux-x64.tar.gz	TextOrbitCompare/run.sh

No Python installation is required. Windows may show a SmartScreen notice because community releases are currently unsigned.

On Linux, the application uses the system X11/OpenGL stack. Native open/save dialogs use an available desktop helper such as Zenity or KDialog; the application itself still works if neither is installed, and files can be dragged into the window.

Quick tour

1. Open a file on each side, paste text, or drop files into the window.
2. Enable Ignore case or Ignore whitespace when relevant.
3. Select Compare or press Ctrl+Enter.
4. Filter the stream, search it, then export a report with Ctrl+S.

Press F1 at any time for the built-in flight manual.

Build with CLion or CMake

Requirements: CMake 3.24+, a C11 compiler, Ninja and Git. CMake fetches the pinned raylib 6.0 source during the first configuration.

cmake --preset debug
cmake --build --preset debug
ctest --preset debug

Open the repository root in CLion to use the included presets. Linux development also requires the X11, OpenGL and ALSA development packages listed in the CI workflow.

Architecture

flowchart LR
    GUI[raylib + raygui GUI] --> Engine[C11 diff engine]
    Dialogs[Native file dialogs] --> GUI
    Engine --> Normalize[Case and whitespace normalization]
    Engine --> LCS[Line alignment]
    Engine --> Report[Portable text report]

Loading

The UI owns file selection and presentation. diff_engine.c receives two strings and returns owned comparison rows. This boundary keeps the algorithm testable without opening a graphical window.

Read docs/TUTORIAL.md for a guided tour of the C code, memory ownership and line-alignment algorithm.

Project map

src/                    C application and comparison engine
tests/                  Headless engine tests
assets/                 Logo and Windows icon
packaging/              Platform release metadata
third_party/            Pinned single-file GUI/dialog sources
legacy/python/          Preserved original Python application
docs/legacy/            Original screenshots and notes

Validation

CI builds and tests the project on Windows and Linux. The Linux job also launches the real GUI under a virtual display and captures a frame, catching startup and rendering regressions.

cmake --build --preset release
ctest --preset release

Limits

Each editor accepts up to 256 KiB. The full line-alignment algorithm is used for ordinary documents; very large line matrices switch to a bounded line-by-line comparison to avoid excessive memory use. Case-insensitive comparison currently covers ASCII characters, while UTF-8 content is preserved in files and reports.

Legacy and license

The original Python/Tkinter implementation remains in legacy/python for learning and historical comparison. The project is released under the MIT License; dependency notices are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.