DIFFPDF(1)

📦
version 2.1.3.1 · 4 versions
, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

✨ DIFFPDF — the compare-two-PDFs girlie ✨

okay so bestie, this is diffpdf from the General Commands Manual, and it's literally the tool you want when you've got two PDFs and you're like "are these the same or am I losing my mind" 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

diffpdf [file1] [file2]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so real talk: this manual page is a very brief lil overview of the diffpdf command, no cap. (For the actual tea, click the GUI's Help button or hit F1 🫶)

DiffPDF is a GUI app whose whole job is comparing two PDF files. Iconic behaviour, honestly.

  • by default it compares the words on each pair of pages 👑
  • but it can also go character by character if you need that (think logographic languages, where word-splitting is not the vibe) ✨
  • and it can compare pages by appearance too — so if a diagram got changed, or a paragraph got reformatted, or a font got swapped, it catches that 🌈

you can also compare particular pages or page ranges, which is the part that makes me feral. Like, say you've got two versions of a PDF: one has pages 1-12 and the other has pages 1-13, because somebody snuck an extra page in as page 4 (rude). You can still compare them by giving two page ranges: 1-12 for the first file and 1-3, 5-13 for the second. Then DiffPDF compares the pages in the pairs (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (4, 5), (5, 6), and so on, all the way to (12, 13). the way it just lines them up 😭👏

and if you pass two PDF filenames right on the command line, the program starts up and compares those files in Text mode. Want Appearance mode instead? Then put one of these in front of the filenames:

  • -a, --appearance — flips the comparison into Appearance mode instead of the default Text mode 🎀

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

if you're more of a command-line-tool girlie and want to compare PDF files from the terminal, check out <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 it may be used by others too, periodt).

lowkey the whole thing is: two files in, -a if you want appearance mode, otherwise it's text mode by default. slay 🌟

mwah 💋 that was diffpdf v2.1.3.1, dated 2013-10-15 — signing off, hope this helped bestie 🎀✨

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