I am looking for an application to compare two PDF files.
Application must:
FileMerge (which has been mentioned here before) is part of the Developer Tools (a 200mb download from the Developer site, once you register as a free online-only developer), and its mission is to compare two files and then merge the differences into one.
- be able to highlight differences between the two documents
- be mac-compatible as I will be using it on a mac
- be free, I do not want to spend any money
I will be mostly using this for comparing the new versions of the apple developer license agreements (since I am an apple developer who is too lazy to read a 40+ page document every time a minor change is made)
The application does not need to be from the App Store, nor does it need to need to be official (some knockoff from GitHub will be fine as long as it does not contain any viruses or bundled crapware) all I need is for it to do what it is intended to do (compare PDF's) very well.
If you would like to go above and beyond, free to take on the challenge of developing the application yourself (or modifying an existing one).
I won't use this application very often and will accept it in any of the following formats:
- Mac app store app
- Java app
- Web app
- AppleScript file (I will need to see the source code)
- Automator workflow
- basically anything that will run on Mac OS X Yosemite (non-beta) and perform the intended task effectively
Mac Merge Tool
5 Answers
You can use DiffNow:
- it's free
- web-app diff tool
- works via pasting text; uploading files; using URLs
The only limitation is that files must be < 2048kb.
The sample on their site (first pdf vs. second pdf):
Tomcompare (command from ImageMagick)
If you want to compare the visual appearance of page 4 of a.pdf with page 6 of b.pdf, you can use ImageMagick's command line tool compare. Here is a variation of commands to try:
(ImageMagick's frame/page counting is zero-based; so '[3]' means 'page 4'...) This will create 'delta' documents, where each pixel that is different between the pages is painted in red:
- The first variant keeps a pale version of
a.pdfas a background image to the page. - The second variant uses a resolution of
300 PPI(instead of the default72 PPI). - The third variant creates a white+red delta only (leaving away the pale background).
- The fourth variant does mark as red only those pixels which have a color difference of more than 5%.
It should be noted, that the comparison only works if the respective page sizes for the compared files are exactly identical.
diffpdf (GUI application)
DiffPDF is a GUI application which can process 2 or 3 PDF input and show the differences:
- There is a mode that compares text content only, highlighting word and character differences.
- There is another mode that compares visual differences and highlights them.
The home page only offers a paying Windows version now, but earlier versions were free. You can grab the source code e.g. from Debian, it includes compilation instructions for OS X.
unorDiffPDF nowadays is an paid software for Windows only, but it was previously free and also available for OS X. You can still download such a previous version.
It allows both visual and textual comparison.
When comparing PDF files, you have the choice between:
- comparing the contents (i.e. the actual text)
- comparing the pages as a whole (visual comparison).
While you might be looking for the first type of comparison, I wanted to offer a way to compare two PDF files page-by-page.
As I've had this requirement regularly in the past, and couldn't find the necessary software to perform the comparison, I wrote my own and made it available on GitHub. It's called pyPdfCompare and is available free of charge.
It runs fine on OS X and Windows but does require you to install Python 3, Ghostscript and ImageMagick. Furthermore, you'll need to perform a pip install for the libraries it uses.
It may be a little too technical and/or not exactly what you were looking for, but I wanted to offer the option anyway, for the sake of completeness.
TomFor your use case, comparing the text and discarding all formatting and non-text elements would work well. You can run the pdftotext utility on each file and then a text comparison tool on the result. On OS X, you can install pdftotext from various free software distribution channels such as Brew or MacPorts, it's part of the poppler package.
Cas Cremers's pdfdiff.py script automates the running of pdftotext (which needs to be installed separately) and of a diff viewer (ditto).
The result is similar to DiffNow cited by ᔕᖺᘎᕊ, I think they use pdftotext internally and plug the output into a text diff webapp.
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Are there any Binary Diff tools for Mac OS X with a GUI? There are a gazillion text-based diff tools, but I need to compare two binary files. Essentially two Hex Editors with Dec/Hex View next to each other (the binary files are a custom file format, so not images or anything that has a more specialized diff tool)
Michael Stum♦
Michael Stum6 Answers
there is Ellié Computing Merge (http://www.elliecomputing.com) (NB: I work for ECMerge).it can compare arbitrarily large files with usual Hex+ASCII views and side by side visual diff.it works on mac and linux/windows as well
armelarmelI just discoverd Hex Fiend – love at first sight! Open both binary files then do File > Compare x and y or Shift+cmd+D
Mac Os Compare Files
Stefan SchmidtStefan SchmidtYou could store the hex of each binary in temp files, then compare them with diff. This would give you the visual hex difference.
xxd creates a hex dump, and we're telling it to print one byte per line, then cut splits on space and compares the correct column
you could also use od instead of xxd
Macos File Comparison
justinjustinMaybe 'HexEdit by Lane Roathe', wxHexEditor or UltraEdit
VladislavVladislavMy go-to is for stuff like this is 010 Editor. It has a very customizable hex bin-diff, configurable min match length, synchronized scrolling, and much more.
Beyond Compare 4 does a pretty good job, especially if you have multiple binary files to compare. However, it's matching isn't obviously configurable and can be wonky, depending on the use-case.
jsearsjsears