Introducing Text Fragment Comparator
Compare two drafts instantly by line, word, or sentence.
See what’s missing, what’s been added, what stayed the same, and what has moved. A quick browser-based tool for writers, editors, and developers checking revisions.
Do you ever have tired eyes? After hours of editing or coding, it can get tricky to spot subtle, or not-so-subtle, differences in blocks of text.
This was a particular problem during the creation of MOUSE. Matters got out of hand, and ChatGPT/Gemini wanted me to patch code. I wasn’t always sure when fragments of code could be replaced or just amended. Ideally, I wanted to just replace, but what had the AI changed?
Operating systems like UNIX provide comparison utilities: diff, cmp, comm, and sdiff. Almost too many options. I was developing on iPad. Then I thought: ChatGPT could write an app for that. So I asked it, and here it is.
Given two fragments of text, A and B, the tool identifies what’s in A but not B etc. You can compare on the basis of lines, words, and sentences. Sentence detection isn’t sophisticated. It looks for periods, plings etc. It’s a place to start, and it might be enough.
Introducing MOUSE
MOUSE is a free browser-based outline editor that uses Markdown as its source. Copy your Markdown document and paste it into MOUSE, and then edit its structure and contents.
Any writer’s story. A large writing project lands on my desk. My head is full of many, truly disordered ideas, and it’s too much. I get confused, overwhelmed by the chaos, and use an outliner tool to organise it all into a complex tree, but I’m not done. I have to create a document in an editor app, like Ulysses, based on the tree. Now I have two documents. Keeping it all synchronised will be a… pain. The outline, I worked so hard on, will soon be discarded, yesterday’s news.
Wouldn’t it be good if the document were the outline? Yes, it would, and apps like Microsoft Word can do that, but they use a proprietary format, and they’re a… lot. I’m a Markdown guy. I like it open and simple.
Then I read about how great AI is at writing programs. What if I persuaded an AI to write that try MOUSE out hereMarkdown outliner? Well, that’s what I did. And I used iPad Safari and Chrome to develop and run it. It’s now a key part of my workflow (I’m using it now), and I’m building novel length documents.
Really free?
Yes. MOUSE is a free tool provided as-is, and I’ve no interest in monetising it. It has no advertising, and you don’t have to log in. I don’t mind what your email address is, and cookies are better covered in chocolate than stored on your computer. I use it for my writing and thought others might also benefit.
As with any tool, verify results before relying on it for critical tasks. Otherwise, do something great with it and be happy.
Try it
You can try MOUSE out here.