Pane Alignment and Synchronized Scrolling

Every once in a while, I find myself needing to visually compare two files side-by-side. Unfortunately, there are few tools available (apart from difference tools which typically only allow a read-only view) that allow you to quickly align textual lines and keep them in sync when scrolling one of the files.

Now in TKE (as of version 2.8) there is a great solution. Simply open the two files in separate panes. You can do this by opening the two files, selecting one of the files, right click on the tab and choose the Move to Other Pane option.

Once both files are in view, place the insertion cursor on the line in each file that you want to synchronize (you will only the insertion cursor in the active editing buffer but TKE remembers the last insertion point in an editing buffer). The lines do not need to be aligned, just in view. Then select the View / Panes / Align Panes menu option. This will cause both of the lines in each buffer to align themselves to each other.

Once the panes have been aligned, you can keep those lines aligned by choosing the View / Panes / Enable Synchronized Scrolling menu option. When either buffer is scrolled, the other pane will match itself. Nice.

You can visually know that synchronized scrolling is enabled for the two buffers because the scrollbars in each buffer will be colored differently (usually in a red color but this can be changed within the theme editor). What’s even better is that pane synchronization is remembered for pairs of editing buffers. Change one of the pane’s buffers and synchronized scrolling is disabled for that pair. Re-select the original editing buffers and they will remain synchronized. Very nice.