carlo said:

Much simpler, one can use wdiff (or dwdiff) and preserve whitespace from one and non-whitespace from the other through regexp. I am interested in comparing your tool with my wdiff approach.

i'd love to see the results from both of you. and compare it to what my program can do, because, at least thus far in its development, my tool still needs considerable baby-sitting for the level of quality one needs to produce. i suggest everyone use their approach on the p.g. e-text for "pride and prejudice"...

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1342/pg1342.txt

let's mold it to this version at archive.org:

http://www.archive.org/details/prideprejudiceno00austuoft

(or, if some other version was the basis for #1342, or you prefer it for any other reason, say so, and we can use that.) -bowerbird