DiRT (Digital Research Tools) has a new home! Please visit Bamboo DiRT to explore this excellent collection of research tools.

Definition: 

According to John Unsworth, comparison is one of the "scholarly primitives," or fundamental scholarly activities.  Comparison tools enable researchers to visualize and discern differences between versions of text, different images, and so forth.

 

Tools:

• Juxta: "tool for comparing and collating multiple witnesses to a single textual work. The software allows users to set any of the witnesses as the base text, to add or remove witness texts, to switch the base text at will, and to annotate Juxta-revealed comparisons and save the results." (Free, cross-platform)
• Versioning Machine: "a framework and an interface for displaying multiple versions of text encoded according to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines" (Free, cross-platform)
• Virtual Lightbox:  "a software tool for comparing images online...All users participating in a common Lightbox session see the same images in the same on-screen configuration at the same time." (Free, cross-platform)

 

Resources:

• Free File Comparison Utilities
• Wikipedia, Comparison of File Comparison Software

 

See Also:

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