<p><strong><em>Comparator (XML)</em></strong> is a free, web-based tool designed to run in a browser window. It is easy to use, designed to <strong>compare</strong> the text of two documents, either hosted at a web address or uploaded from the user's files.</p> <p>Users may set the comparison criteria. <strong>Options</strong> include all words, words matching a pattern, words in or excluded from a user-specified list, or excluded from the Glasgow <strong>stop word list</strong>. Words can also be restricted by XML elements. Searching a <strong>pattern</strong> rather than a word requires skill with <strong>regular expressions</strong> and is thus not accessible to all users.</p> <p>Other features include <strong>options</strong> to sort by the first text&rsquo;s word count or ratio of relative word count, and to display as <strong>HTML </strong>or a <strong>tab delimited</strong> text. The HTML output gives several <strong>tables of information</strong> about the texts, including basic information about the texts, a word comparison, words in the first text, and words in the second. Any of the words in the word comparison table may be clicked to produce a <strong>concordance</strong> for that word.</p> <p>This tool has a few <strong>problems</strong>. When the tab delimited output is selected, the tool may not process some characters correctly; please see List Words (Plain Text) for examples. In addition, punctuation like open quotes and long dashes are often appended to the adjacent word, skewing the counts and comparison.</p> <p><strong><em>Despite these issues, Comparator (XML) is an effective way to make a comparative analysis of two texts.</em></strong> Versions are also available for HTML and plain text documents.</p>