I am looking for an application to compare two PDF files. Application must: be a
ID: 656926 • Letter: I
Question
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
Explanation / Answer
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.
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