1. vdiff
Visual diff. The operation of finding differences between two files
by eyeball search. The term optical diff has also been reported, and is
sometimes more specifically used for the act of superimposing two nearly
identical printouts on one another and holding them up to a light to spot
differences. Though this method is poor for detecting omissions in the
‘rear’ file, it can also be used with printouts of graphics, a
claim few if any diff programs can make. See
diff.An interesting variant of the vdiff technique usable by anyone who
has sufficient control over the parallax of their eyeballs (e.g. those who
can easily view random-dot stereograms), is to hold up two paper printouts
and go cross-eyed to superimpose them. This invokes deep, fast, built-in
image comparison wetware (the same machinery responsible for depth
perception) and differences stand out almost immediately. This technique
is good for finding edits in graphical images, or for comparing an image
with a compressed version to spot artifacts.
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Definitions of vdiff
