Description
This program is used to compare postscript or pdf files visually. Each page is rendered as separate image file (by default in fairly low resolution), and the pages are compared pixel by pixel. If enough pixels differ between respective pages, the pages will be included in the output.
The rendered pages are stored in a local cache directory, where they might take up quite some space.
Use the -c option to clear the cache when done.
Requirements
- Tested on Linux/Mac OS X; may run under Cygwin.
- Ghostscript
- netpbm
Documentation
Usage: diffps [options] file1 [file2 | dir]
If file2 is not given, the latest version from CVS is used.
Options:
Page rendering:
-d directory
directory for page cache (default: ".diffps")
-p pages
view only the given pages (quoted shell glob pattern)
(default: "*")
-t threshold
minimum number of pixels to differ (default: 1)
-r res Resolution for pixmap rendering (default: 72)
-f re-do comparison (force; discard cache)
Viewing:
-0 report only
-1 view differing pages in diff-mode (red = recent; default)
-2 view differing pages pairwise
-3 both of the above
-x viewer specify image viewer for above (default: xv)
General:
-h This help.
-c clean cache
-D debug
Download
Installation
The download link yields a plain shell script. Install as diffps in your $PATH, and make it executable as:
chmod +x diffps