One o f the most important stages in the localisation process is the provision of high quality help and documentation in the target languages. Translation of computer manuals and Help files consists of: (i) translating the text (ii) maintaining the formatting of the source. Although many tools are available to translators, the greatest need for standardised tools exists in the area of formatting and layout of documentation. At present a significant proportion of time allocated to this stage is spent checking that the formatting has not changed as a consequence of translation. For example, properties such as font type, font size and style (e.g. bold, italic) may accidentally be changed during translation. It is also possible that two paragraphs are combined into one, or even deleted altogether from the text. The aim of this research is to assess the viability of developing a generic comparison process for documentation files. This process should be able to take two text-based document files (e.g. TeX, MIF, RTF) and compare the underlying codes (called markup) that describe the format and structure o f the documents, where format is its physical appearance (e.g. underlined text, margins) and the structure is its composition (e.g. paragraphs, chapters, headings). Although the localised documents will usually use the same markup scheme as the original, the possibility of incorporating the comparison of different file types into the process is investigated, in keeping with the concept of generality. However, each markup scheme has its own set of codes. In addition to this, the format is described by specific markup and the structure by generalised markup. The vast differences between these schemes means it is not always possible to make a direct comparison, complicating the process.