DiffPDFc Changes

DiffPDFc is used to compare two PDF files—textually or visually.

4.1.1

Bug fix. In rare cases PDF and PNG reports could be missing a page; this has been fixed.
PNG report filenames now include both page numbers (even if they are the same).

4.1.0

Improved speed—up to 10% faster for book-length documents.

4.0.5

Subtle algorithm improvement which eliminates some rare false positives.
Added support for specifying the number of cores on the command line (using --cores) and in a .dpc configuration file. This should not normally be needed since DiffPDFc auto-detects the number of cores, but may be required if auto-detection fails (e.g., which may occur when DiffPDFc is executed within some other process).
PDF report headers now end with the program name and version rather than just the program name.

4.0.4

Bug fix. In rare cases margin exclusion didn't always work correctly in text modes—this has now been fixed.

4.0.3

Bug fix. Whitespace is now fully normalized. This means that all whitespace characters (space, non-breaking space, etc.), are treated as a space (i.e., as a word separator)—this reduces false positives in some cases.

4.0.2

Improved PDF library: this produces more accurate results, but can be slightly slower for book-length documents.
Fixed a bug which prevented page ranges being specified in a .dpc configuration file.

4.0.1

Startup is now much faster.
Tiered price discounts are available when buying at least 10 licenses.
The --help option now shows the computer ID. This is useful for identifying the computer for those who have bought multiple license keys.

4.0.0

Added a show.ins.del.pages option. This can result in more understandable results in some cases when using a pairs setting greater than one.
Changed how license keys work so that they are now tied to the computer DiffPDFc runs on rather than to the licensee's name. The Register window has been updated to reflect this change.
Changed the license terms to match how the new license keys work.

3.8.0

Completely rewritten the code for handling page ranges. This fixes a bug. It has also resulted in comparisons between page ranges being faster—much faster in the case of comparing relatively few pages out of PDFs that have many pages.
Applied various small bug fixes including correctly numbering PNG reports and using the correct (logical) page number in the title of PDF reports.
There is now progress indication when generating PDF reports, since this can take more than a few seconds for large reports.
The quiet option now works correctly: when set, no progress information is output.

3.7.7

Added a tiny Visual Basic example function to show how one might call DiffPDFc from a Visual Basic program.
Some internal changes so that DiffPDFc and DiffPDF might be able to coexist in the same directory—although this is not recommended or supported.

3.7.6

Updated one of the libraries that DiffPDFc depends on.
Finally found and fixed the problem where in rare cases the Register window would say that a valid license key is invalid.

3.7.5

Applied another fix to stop the Register window saying that a valid license key is invalid.

3.7.4

Changed the default insertion highlighting color to cyan (from blue).
Changed the default highlighting x extend to 4.0 points (from 2.5).
Applied another fix to stop the Register window saying that a valid license key is invalid.

3.7.3

Introduced a new (and hopefully final) fix to stop the Register window saying that a valid license key is invalid.

3.7.2

Implemented a new more robust and general fix for landscape-oriented and other rotated pages. Now all reports work correctly for rotated pages in all modes (appearance, chars, and words).

3.7.1

Fixed the handling of landscape-oriented pages, that is, pages rotated by 90°. Visual reports now correctly show the whole page with differences correctly shown. Text reports' differences now have the correct coordinates. Note that while the appearance and words comparison modes work correctly for landscape pages, currently, chars mode does not. (Fixed in 3.7.2.)
Fixed the change bar that is normally shown in visual text mode reports so that it is always visible even when the report is scaled to less than 100%.

3.7.0

Added line tolerance algorithm 6 which can produce better results in certain rare cases.
Slightly improved the 3.6.3 bug fix by making it more general.

3.6.3

Fixed a subtle bug that resulted in highlighting being painted in the wrong places in visual reports in very rare cases.

3.6.2

Fixed a minor bug in the Register window.

3.6.1

Added the report.new.renderer option to control which renderer to use, since in rare cases the old renderer is better than the new one.

3.6.0

DiffPDFc now uses a much better PDF rendering library that produces clearer and sharper PNG and PDF reports. This also fixes a rare bug where some images were rendered as black rectangles.
Increased the pairs maximum to 1000.

3.5.1

Fixed a bug that led to top-left corners being rendered incorrectly in PNG and PDF reports—this did not affect comparisons, which correctly accounted for any corner exclusions.
Fixed a bug that meant in rare cases a valid registration key was treated as invalid in the Register window. (A workaround for older versions is to delete the last character of the name and then retype it.)

3.5.0

Introduced line tolerance algorithm 5 and made it the default. This algorithm is superior to all the others.
Introduced line tolerance algorithm 4 which like the earlier algorithms is about 10% faster than algorithm 5. This is better than the others, but not as good as algorithm 5. All previous algorithms have been deprecated and will disappear in version 5.0.0.
When hyphen normalization is in force, non-standard double quotes are now also normalized.
Implemented some small speed and memory usage optimizations for the text comparison modes.
Reduced the maximum digits after the decimal point in reports to a more sensible (and reliable) 9.

3.4.0

The default line.tolerance.algorithm and the default line.tolerance have both been changed to reduce false positives. Either or both defaults can be overridden to get the same behavior as older versions if required.
Visual reports now match those produced by DiffPDF.
This affects the numbers used in PNG report filenames, and it also affects the contents of PDF reports when page ranges are used.
Updated the PDF library that DiffPDFc uses.

3.3.0

Changed the default line tolerance from 10 points to 12 points.
Added support for the line.tolerance option. (In previous versions it was fixed at 10 points; now it can be changed.)
Implemented some small optimizations.

3.2.1

Fixed a subtle bug that could produce false positives in some rare cases.

3.2.0

Added support for the verbose option.
Fixed a bug that produced incorrect reports when using page ranges.
Tiny improvement to pages validation.
Redesigned visual reports' titles.
Usually the (logical) page numbers are the same, but they may be different if ranges of pages are compared rather than whole documents.
Efficiency improvements: PNG reports are now created without the need for any temporary files (before they needed two per page), and PDF reports are created using one temporary file per page (as opposed to using three per page before).

3.1.2

Fixed a bug that prevented the square.size being set in a .dpc file.
Tried to eliminate the output of spurious warning messages that could sometimes occur.

3.1.1

The installer now tries to automatically add DiffPDFc to the PATH.

3.1.0

If a report.path is specified, then reports whose filenames don't include an absolute path are written to the report path, rather than to the current directory.
When margin or corner exclusions are in effect, lines indicating the excluded areas are now drawn on the pages shown in visual reports (i.e., PNG and PDF reports).
The margin and corner line colors and line styles can be specified in configuration files.
Fixed a validation bug that prevented colors from being specified as R,G,B triples in configuration files.

3.0.4

Changed the manual's filename to include DiffPDFc's major version number.
Some improved error messages

3.0.3

Now correctly output an error message if a report cannot be written (e.g., if the directory it is being written to is read-only like C:\ usually is).

3.0.2

Fixed a subtle bug that caused a crash when producing appearance comparison reports when the number of pages in the two PDFs differ.
Fixed a bug where two PDFs are reported as the same when their initial pages really are the same but one has one or more extra pages.

3.0.1

Error messages are now printed to the console (stderr stream) as expected, rather than written to the file %TMP%\diffpdfc.log.
If a report cannot be output, an error message is correctly printed instead. (This fix only worked for some cases; the complete fix is in 3.0.3.)

3.0.0

First public release of this comparepdf successor.

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