Navigating hidden merge points

When you navigate multiple locations in a merge point using the Next Location button, you may select a difference whose location is hidden in the merge output pane. Because the merge output display depends on top-down merging, some input nodes cannot be represented until some level of resolution has occurred. To indicate this condition, the ancestor node is shown in the merge output pane with the hidden background color.

The following steps illustrate how to detect and work with a hidden merge point.

  1. In the first figure, a merge point with multiple locations has been selected. As a result, the Next Location button in the toolbar is enabled.

    The hover help and contributor pane selections show that the unresolved difference is a section element.

  2. Now, assume that you click the Next Location button to see the next location. When a hidden node is encountered, the next location is not automatically selected. Instead, the following window is displayed:
    • Click No to navigate to the actual node location. As the next figure shows, the section node is visible in the input contributors. But in the merge output pane, it is not:

      In the merge output pane, the merge point is highlighted with the hidden background color: This indicates that the selected node does not correspond to this merge output node, but to a node within the subtree. The nearest ancestor is typically a merge point or resolved placeholder.

    • Click Yes to resolve this difference in the normal top-down fashion. This option automatically selects the merge point that should be resolved first: the nearest ancestor that does not exist in the merge output. This is typically a merge point or resolved placeholder. In this case, the nearest unresolved ancestor of the section node, the Texts node, is selected:

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