[Dubious]

LM:

Re 1). This will depend upon what you are programming in, but in Visual Basic6 (and I believe the other tools which are part of the 'Visual Studio' line from MS; they share tons of code as DLLs and VXDs) the 'ToolTip' is a property of the various controls. Just set the value to your description.

Re 3). Highlighting should just be a matter of changing the background/foreground colors. If I were doing this I would simply read the files being compared into separate 'display' arrays and as discrepancies are detected for each 'row' in either file as it is read deal with the display issues (blank lines, highlighting, line numbering, etc.) in the appropriate array. But every programmer has their own style.

Re 4). It would not be unreasonable to ask the user to point to the installed game directory, but I would simply do a directory 'hunt' for the SE4.EXE file first and ask only if more than one was found. Or (less desirable in my view but not unreasonable either), require they install your tool in a specific subdirectory directly under the game directory so you can use relative pathing (ie '..' for the parent directory, '.' for the current directory) so you use '..\AI\<filename>' or '..\Pictures\Races\<RaceName>\<filename>'.

I'm just thrilled someone is willing to pursue this. (I have ZERO time to program outside of work these days.) Glad you find my comments useful.