===============================================================================
README                   Visual Binary Diff 3.0_beta4               26-Jul-2008
===============================================================================
                                      Copyright 2000-2008 Christopher J. Madsen
CONTENTS
========
  [1] About Visual Binary Diff
  [2] System Requirements
  [3] Installation
  [4] License
  [5] Author

[1] About Visual Binary Diff
----------------------------
Visual Binary Diff (VBinDiff) displays files in hexadecimal and ASCII
(or EBCDIC).  It can also display two files at once, and highlight the
differences between them.  Unlike diff, it works well with large files
(up to 4 GB).

VBinDiff was inspired by the Compare Files function of the ProSel
utilities by Glen Bredon, for the Apple II.  When I couldn't find a
similar utility for the PC, I wrote it myself.

The single-file mode was inspired by the LIST utility of 4DOS and
friends (http://www.jpsoft.com/4ntdes.htm).  While less
(http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/) provides a good line-oriented
display, it has no equivalent to LIST's hex display.  (True, you can
pipe the file through hexdump, but that's incredibly inefficient on
multi-gigabyte files.)


[2] System Requirements
-----------------------
Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, or later
  or
A POSIX-compatible system with ncurses (eg, Linux)

It should be possible to port the ncurses version to work with other
curses libraries (as long as they provide the panel library), but I
don't have access to such a system.  Patches are welcome.


[3] Installation
----------------
VBinDiff uses the standard GNU autoconf system.  See the file INSTALL if
you're not familiar with that.


[4] License
-----------
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

The GNU General Public License can be found in the file COPYING.

The file putty.src is not part of VBinDiff and can be distributed
under the same terms as ncurses.


[5] Author
----------
Christopher J. Madsen           vbindiff AT cjmweb.net
1113 Abrams Rd. Apt. 296
Richardson, TX  75081-5573

VBinDiff Home Page:
http://www.cjmweb.net/vbindiff/
