Beyond Compare 3 editing disabled

Question

With BC2, when i click the Show differences... option in SourceGear Vault. It allow me to copy from the repository to the working version and save but I can't do this with BC3. It doesn't allow copying to the otherside (right) and have the editing disabled showing at the bottom of the BC3. It is even the same with DiffMerge. What am I not understanding here?

Can someone explain to me why the changes in BC3 and is there a workaround?

Answer 1

The few reasons I have found are:

• If the encoding of the file is different than the default. In this case change the encoding to the expected one. (Japanese-ShiftJIS in my case)
• If a refresh of files is in progress.

Answer 2

there must be a flag on the command line to call BC such as /ro# or /#ro or /(side)readonly (where side is left or right), it prevents editing.

these flags are there because differs are often called with temporary files to diff, in particular from SCC. and Vault probably has a single "external diff" command, thus you have to choose whether the flags are always there, it protects you from unexpectly editing a temporary file and loose this work when closing the diff tool, or not.

Answer 3

Beyond Compare will disable editing of a file for any of the following reasons:

• It's one of the input files in a 3-way merge
• The comparison was cancelled
• The comparison encountered an error (corrupt file, invalid character encoding, out of memory, gamma rays, etc)
• The file format's conversion settings don't support converting back to the original format (MS Word, PDF)
• The file is on a read-only "filesystem" (7zip/RAR/CHM archives, CD/DVD-ROMs)
• A file or parent folder had editing explicitly disabled by the user in the session settings or using the /ro command line switches
• The viewer itself doesn't support editing (eg, Hex Compare prior to v4)

Also, the Full Edit (F2) toggle in the Text Compare View menu switches between inline editing and line-based mode. If it's disabled you can copy/delete whole lines and type in the line details edits at the bottom of the window, but the main windows won't have a cursor, typing is disabled, and it will always select whole lines. Unlike the above items, this doesn't show "Editing Disabled" in the status bar.