xdiff.ncc

A PDL file comparison tool, support comparison of PDF, Postscript and AFP documents. xdiff.ncc not only compares rendering bitmap of each page, but also analyzes and compares all contents in each page. For detail, see showcase below.

Showcase

https://lumpchen.github.io/xdiff.ncc/

Testcase	Control	Test	Report
simple text	control.pdf	test.pdf	report.html
simple image	control.pdf	test.pdf	report.html
table	control.pdf	test.pdf	report.html
form control	control.pdf	test.pdf	report.html
Indesign forms	control.pdf	test.pdf	report.html
misc	control.pdf	test.pdf	report.html

Maven

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.lumpchen</groupId>
    <artifactId>xdiff.ncc</artifactId>
    <version>0.9.2</version>
</dependency>

How To Use

import me.lumpchen.xdiff.DiffSetting;
import me.lumpchen.xdiff.XDiff

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        File control = "path_to_control_pdf";
        File test = "path_to_test_pdf";
        File reportDir = "path_to_report_dir";
        
        DiffSetting diffSetting = DiffSetting.getDefaultSetting();
        diffSetting.compSetting.ignoreDifferentTextStyle = true;

        int res = XDiff.diff(control, test, reportDir, diffSetting);
    }
}

For more samples, see https://github.com/lumpchen/xdiff.ncc/tree/master/src/test/java/me/lumpchen/xdiff

Diff Parameters

resolution = 96
previewImageFormat = png
noReportOnSameResult = false
printReport = false
showDifferentPagesOnly = false

enableCompareImage = true
enableComparePath = true
enableMergePath = true
enableCompareAnnots = true
enableTextPositionCompare = true
enableImageAppearanceCompare = false
enableAnnotAppearanceCompare = true
enablePathPixelCompare = false

# Global Tolerance
toleranceOfHorPosition = 1
toleranceOfVerPosition = 1	

# Frame size Tolerance
toleranceOfRectWidth = 1
toleranceOfRectHeight = 1

ignoreZeroSizeArea = true
# Ignore graphics which is white color filling or stroking and no graphics for comparison.
ignoreInvisibleGraphics = false
# Ignore text consisting of invisible characters, such as text consisting of consecutive spaces
ignoreInvisibleText = false

# If true, the comparison algorithm would compare contents according to the order inside page contents.
# Default as false, maybe helpful for PDFs produced by Indesign 
disableLineBreaking = false

# Spacing Between Words
# Determining whether a space should be inserted
scaleOfSpaceingBetweenWords = 0.5

# Diff image background color, support BLACK WHITE RED GREEN BLUE CYAN MAGENTA YELLOW
diffBitmapBackground = BLACK

# Ignore page blank area, just compare area contains page contents
ignorePageBlankArea = false

acceptanceDifferenceArea = 

# Symbol font setting
symbolFonts = Webdings, Wingdings2, Wingdings-Regular

# acceptanceDifferenceFontNameMap = [Arial-Bold, Arial-BoldMT] [Arial, ArialMT]
acceptanceDifferenceFontNameMap = 

# Different character may shows same glyph, for example, 00a0(Non-breaking space) against of 0020(space). 
# Add these pairs of characters in acceptanceDifferenceCharMap, xDiff will accept difference caused of these different paired characters.
# [00a0, 0020], must add unicode value in map
acceptanceDifferenceCharMap = [00a0, 0020] [c2a0, 0020] [00ad, 002d] [c2ad, 002d]

useTwelvemonkeysImageIOProvider = true

# GhostScript setting
GS_Path = C:/Program Files/gs/gs9.18/bin/gswin64c.exe
GS_PS2PDF_Para = -sDEVICE=pdfwrite

# AFP comparison setting
enableAFPTLEComparison = false
enableAFPNOPComparison = false

Build

You need Java JDK 7 (or higher) and Maven 3 http://maven.apache.org/ to build xdiff.ncc. The recommended build command is:

mvn clean install

The default build will compile the Java sources and package the binary classes into jar packages. See the Maven documentation for all the other available build options.

Binary download:

xdiff.jar, download both xdiff.jar and config.properties. xdiff.jar is an excutable java program, see detail in usage section.

Executable Jar Usage

Usage: java -jar xdiff.jar [options] <baseline-pdf> <test-pdf> <result-folder>

Options:
  -config                            : Comparison configuration file path.

Example: java -jar xdiff.jar c:/config.properties c:/xdiff/control.pdf c:/xdiff/test.pdf c:/xdiff/report

For Postscript file comparion, xdiff.ncc need GhostScript installed in advance, xdiff.ncc will use it as a Postscript to PDF convertor. Set GS_Path in config.properties:

GS_Path = C:/Program Files/gs/gs9.18/bin/gswin64c.exe

Resource

xdiff.ncc uses PDFBox for PDF interpreting and rendering. PDFBox is a project of the Apache Software Foundation http://www.apache.org/. xdiff.ncc is based on PDFBox 2.0.7.

Development plan

Generate PDF format report
Continuous comparison accross pages
header/footer setting
Automatically identify paragraphs and tables

Support

lumpchen@163.com

License

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0