Files Compare is a visual tool for files and directories comparison. It helps you to compare and merge different versions of the same textual file. Meld for OSX File and folder comparison made easy for Mac/OSX View on GitHub Download Latest.dmg. Why Meld for Mac/OSX and not Macports/Homebrew. Command line interface for easy integration with existing tools, including git mergetool; Meld for OSX is maintained by yousseb.
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Active3 years, 6 months ago
I am looking for an application to compare two PDF files.
Application must:
- 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
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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):
Tom5,85388 gold badges2828 silver badges5656 bronze badges
ᔕᖺᘎᕊᔕᖺᘎᕊ4,62366 gold badges2929 silver badges5959 bronze badges
compare
(command from ImageMagick)
![File Compare Tool For Mac File Compare Tool For Mac](https://www.prestosoft.com/images/screenshots/ed_screen.jpg)
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.pdf
as 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.
unor5,13344 gold badges2828 silver badges8585 bronze badges
Kurt PfeifleKurt Pfeifle
DiffPDF 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.
![File Compare Tool For Mac File Compare Tool For Mac](https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/26059-36544-preview-pdf-add-section00003-l.jpg)
Free File Compare Tool
Michael SchmidMichael Schmid
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.
Tom5,85388 gold badges2828 silver badges5656 bronze badges
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For 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.Community♦
GillesGilles3,90133 gold badges2323 silver badges4242 bronze badges
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged osxpdfcomparison or ask your own question.
What is Meld?
Meld is a visual diff and merge tool targeted at developers. Meld helps you compare files, directories, and version controlled projects. It provides two- and three-way comparison of both files and directories, and has support for many popular version control systems.
Meld helps you review code changes and understand patches. It might even help you to figure out what is going on in that merge you keep avoiding.
Features
- Two- and three-way comparison of files and directories
- File comparisons update as you type
- Auto-merge mode and actions on change blocks help make merges easier
- Visualisations make it easier to compare your files
- Supports Git, Bazaar, Mercurial, Subversion, etc.
- …and more
Meld is licensed under the GPL v2, except as noted.
File Compare And Merge Tool For Mac
Getting it
Meld is packaged for most Linux/Unix distributions, including Fedora, Ubuntu, and Suse. Unless you want the absolutely latest version, you should install Meld through your package manager.
Windows users should download the MSI, or for older releases, check out the Meld installer project.
Mac Compare Tool
On OS X, Meld is not yet officially supported. For pre-built binaries, these OS X builds are the best option. You can also get Meld from MacPorts, Fink or Brew; none of these methods are supported.
You can also run Meld without installing it. Just extract the archive and run
bin/meld
from the archive folder. Source: | Meld 3.20.1 | 31 March 2019 |
Windows: | Meld 3.20.0 | 6 January 2019 |
Note: The 3.20 Windows build uses a new build chain. If you experience issues, please use Meld 3.18.3. |
File Compare Tool For Excel
Requirements
File Comparison App Mac
- Python 3.3
- GTK+ 3.14
- GLib 2.36
- PyGObject 3.14
- GtkSourceView 3.14
- pycairo