DiffPDF

DiffPDF is used to compare two PDF files—textually or visually.

By default the comparison is of the text on each pair of pages, but comparing the appearance of pages is also supported (for example, if a diagram is changed or a paragraph reformatted). It is also possible to compare particular pages or page ranges. For example, if there are two versions of a PDF file, one with pages 1-12 and the other with pages 1-13 because of an extra page having been added as page 4, they can be compared by specifying two page ranges, 1-12 for the first and 1-3, 5-13 for the second. This will make DiffPDF compare pages in the pairs (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (4, 5), (5, 6), and so on, to (12, 13).

A couple of example PDF files are provided (boson1.pdf and boson2.pdf) so that you can try it out. PDF files can be loaded from the GUI (by pressing the File #1 and File #2 buttons), or by specifying them on the command line.

DiffPDF is licensed under the GNU General Public License v 2 open source license. To build it you will need a C++ compiler that supports tr1, the Qt4 libraries, and the Poppler library—all these should be available as standard packages on most Linux and BSD systems. The source is diffpdf-0.4.0.tar.gz (24K). Building follows the standard pattern for Qt4 applications and is explained in the README. Fedora users don't have to build it manually, they can simply install the binary diffpdf package using their prefered package management tool. Debian now also has a diffpdf package.

DiffPDF

If you like DiffPDF, you might like to buy one of my books. I also provide training and consultancy in C++, Qt, Python, and PyQt.

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