Various technologies and techniques are disclosed performing a bidirectional synchronization between a visual representation and a textual representation. A visual representation of a file is synchronized with a textual representation of a file using a same delta propagation that is used to synchronize the textual representation with the visual representation. A semantic view is generated for the visual representation, and a separate semantic view is generated for the textual representation of the file. The visual representation and the textual representation follow a same semantic structure for comparison. To perform synchronization after changes are made to one of the representations, a synchronization process is performed using the semantic views to update the other representation.