NAME¶

diffpdf - compare two PDF files textually or visually

SYNOPSIS¶

diffpdf [file1] [file2]

DESCRIPTION¶

This manual page very briefly documents the diffpdf command. (Click the GUI's Help button or press F1 for more information.)

DiffPDF is a GUI application used to compare two PDF files.
By default the comparison is of the words on each pair of pages, but comparing character by character is also supported (e.g., for logographic languages). And there's also support for comparing the pages by appearance (for example, if a diagram is changed or if a paragraph is reformatted, or a font changed). 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).

If the program is passed two PDF filenames on the command line it will start up and compare those files in Text mode (or in Appearance mode if the filenames are preceded by -a or --appearance).

OPTIONS¶

-a, --appearance, -c, --characters, -w, --words

Set the initial comparison mode.

--save-and-quit[=file.pdf]

Compare the two files given without showing a window. If they differ, save the differing pages, with the differences highlighted, to file.pdf (default diff.pdf), replacing any existing file. If they appear to be the same, no file is written.

--help

Show all options.

EXIT STATUS¶

With --save-and-quit, the exit status is 0 if the files appear to be the same, 1 if they differ, and 2 if there was trouble (e.g., a file could not be read).

FILES¶

~/.config/DiffPDF/DiffPDF.conf

User settings (window layout, zoom, margins, highlighting, etc.). Older versions stored these in ~/.config/Qtrac Ltd./DiffPDF.conf, from which they are copied the first time a newer version is run.

SEE ALSO¶

For a command line tool for comparing PDF files see http://www.qtrac.eu/comparepdf.html.

AUTHOR¶

diffpdf was written by Mark Summerfield <mark@qtrac.eu>.

This manual page was written by Mark Summerfield <mark@qtrac.eu> and David Paleino <dapal@debian.org>, for the Debian project (and may be used by others).