Comparing e-books: Wow

[Feldegast]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

A diff tool is useful for seeing the changes in the code of a book. If you want to compare two books to see which one to keep, open them in the viewer.

a diff tool has many uses the the idea that a tool can only be used for 1 thing is a little short sighted... designing a tool so that many use cases are feasable is smart design. Comparing books to decide which to keep is something i bet many people using Calibre would use. currently opening the 1st then comparing to another does work but how is this different to selecting both books from rhe library? you could select a totaly different book in the editor and selecting both from the library makes sure the right book is selected instead of making sure the directory is the one you want when opening the 2nd book.

Unfortunately the viewer is not realy up to the task of showing differences in multiple files quickly... The best alternative i can think of currently is extracting both books then using a tool like winmerge, to show differences then selecting the book to keep... winmerge also allows eding side by side which is handy...

[kovidgoyal]

Well I'm afraid designing a tool for multiple uses is too smart for poor old me.

> /dev/null

[Divingduck]

Hi Kovid,
I just do some translations and I check the diff tool from command line.

The translation string gives an example:
calibre-debug --diff file2 fiel1
Instead of:
calibre-debug --diff -- "file 2.epub" "file 1.epub"

The User Guide for Command Line Interface has sometimes problems with --. There is shown sometimes a – instead of --.

Example for calibre-debug:
In general description and for commands like this (and for some other):
--diff
Run the calibre diff tool. For example: calibre-debug –diff – file1 file2

An additional point: I often recognize that users came in trouble because they don't know how to use an option correctly. Most commonly are missing quotation marks because of a file name with spaces or/and missing file extensions like "book 1" -> "book 1.epub". Path names are also a point. Maybe it is a good idea to put this as an explanation in the first place of chapter Command Line Interface

Finally, I recognize a different behavior at the bottom of the window for the information line (pls. see picture, first part is via command line and below part is via editor).You show the information about which files are part of the comparison if I open the diff tool from the editor. This is missing if I open the tool via command line.

[kovidgoyal]

The diff tool does not work only for epubs, but for all file types. I even use it as my primary code diff tool for developing calibre. The necessity for adding -- before the filenames is actually a bug, which has been fixed for the next release, which is why the translation string changed.

And the help for all the command line tools (except for a couple) has a note about enclosing file arguments in quotes. See for example here: http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/cli/ebook-convert.html

As for the double hyphen to mdash problem that is a limitation of the documentation generation system calibre uses.

[kovidgoyal]

This commit should help fix the problem of -- becoming an em-dash

https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr...d0bb00840ea125

[Divingduck]

Thanks for your quick answer.
I need to make a correction in the translation, because I add it again. Good to know, will be remove within then next hour.

I just recognize you are experimenting with the double hyphen

To the file name, it was only an example to use the epub ext. Maybe "file.ext" is a better description. My intension was mainly to let you know this is a question I become quite often if a normal user try to start with command line.

Edit: You was much faster and you add a remark. Very nice
Thanks a lot!

[Feldegast]

Originally Posted by Divingduck

calibre-debug --diff file2 fiel1
Instead of:
calibre-debug --diff -- "file 2.epub" "file 1.epub"

now i know why it wasn't working!

at least until the next upgrade.. but as was said just go back to without the extra --
ty again!

[julo]

Just stumbled across this, really like it. I know this is an old thread but I couldn't find anything more recent.

Are there any options (maybe undocumented and already there)? I would like to see:
Beautify as part of CLI
Hide all meta and show text only (what you would see in E-book viewer) also CLI

Also some way to save a comparison to file.
Thanks for your consideration.

[kovidgoyal]

convert to txt and diff that using a regular diff tool, that will get you all your feature requests except beautify.

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by julo

Also some way to save a comparison to file.
Thanks for your consideration.

TextDiff plugin can do that:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=350421

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

convert to txt and diff that using a regular diff tool, that will get you all your feature requests except beautify.

WinMerge is awesome on Windows, it provides context menu actions to select and compare files directly in File explorer

[julo]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

convert to txt and diff that using a regular diff tool, that will get you all your feature requests except beautify.

Its not that I do not know how to compare. For instance https://products.fileformat.app/word...omparison/epub
What I like on this is that this is CLI and epubs do not need to be in the Calibre library.
Right now I made a bat file with the appropriate code and all I have to do is drag two (2) epubs on the bat file and voila I get my comparison. One Step!
Except any text diffs are well hidden.

[kovidgoyal]

So make a bat file and run

ebook-convert $1 a.txt && ebook-convert $2 b.txt
diff a.txt b.txt
rm a.txt b.txt

[julo]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

So make a bat file and run

ebook-convert $1 a.txt && ebook-convert $2 b.txt
diff a.txt b.txt
rm a.txt b.txt

I mentioned in my earlier post I like to compare what I see in E-book viewer. I consider text like in bold, italics, etc. also changes and while E-book viewer shows it comparing via strictly txt loses that.