Does any free software compare epubs?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Thanks Red. That helps a lot. I think I judged this Calibre compare too quickly. I think it's going to be good. A question though. I made three changes to a file and ran the compare. It caught all the changes but adds all this other distracting stuff that it's calling changes, which makes it harder to find the actual changes. (screenshot--I circled some of them). Is there any way to get rid of that clutter?

Greg - not that I know of.

Suggest you put your question in the calibre/Editor forum ==>> https://www.mobileread.com/forums/fo...play.php?f=262

Looks like you'd like an option to suppress highlighting of differences in markup, other folks might like the suppression of differences in content. Kovid is the best person to answer that question.

BR

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Greg - not that I know of.

Suggest you put your question in the calibre/Editor forum ==>> https://www.mobileread.com/forums/fo...play.php?f=262

Looks like you'd like an option to suppress highlighting of differences in markup, other folks might like the suppression of differences in content. Kovid is the best person to answer that question.

BR

Thanks Red. Thing is there were no changes in the markup. The Calibre Editor just somehow found them. I'll experiment with it some more and if I have more questions I'll go to the other forum. Appreciate it.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Thanks Red. Thing is there were no changes in the markup. The Calibre Editor just somehow found them. I'll experiment with it some more and if I have more questions I'll go to the other forum. Appreciate it.

The differences look like the result of using different editors, or options when doing something like a convert. You could open both versions in the same editor, run whatever code cleanup or HTML formatting function they have and save them. That should remove a lot of the markup differences.

The alternative is to use calibre to convert both to text. Then do a text comparison of the results.

Also, the third thing you marked is not a difference. That's a unicode character - probably an emdash. The calibre editor marks unicode characters them in yellow to make it easy to see. The differences are on the lines that have the blue background. The grey background is to give some context around the changes.

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

To compare different versions of the same epub, usually. It's very handy to know exactly what changes you made to the original. It's the heart and and soul of any version control system. Very handy when multiple people are working on the same project (or you just want to track your changes/ corrections/additions to an epub over time).

Very handy for simply double-checking your own work, as well. I would think the benefits would be painfully obvious (even if it's not something you see yourself needing).

Ah, for the author (publisher) him-herself, yes!

The only use that came to my mind was checking competing versions of a public-domain book on Amazon.com. I could use such a feature for competing versions of À la recherche du temps perdu for example.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by davidfor

... run whatever code cleanup or HTML formatting function they have and save them. That should remove a lot of the markup differences.

I forgot to mention I have calibre's on open code beautifier unchecked in Editor Options, it probably defaults to checked, I also have Sigil's Mend on Save and Close unchecked - I prefer to do such things knowingly, then if something goes wrong I've only myself to blame.

BR

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The differences look like the result of using different editors, or options when doing something like a convert. You could open both versions in the same editor, run whatever code cleanup or HTML formatting function they have and save them. That should remove a lot of the markup differences.

The alternative is to use calibre to convert both to text. Then do a text comparison of the results.

Also, the third thing you marked is not a difference. That's a unicode character - probably an emdash. The calibre editor marks unicode characters them in yellow to make it easy to see. The differences are on the lines that have the blue background. The grey background is to give some context around the changes.

Thanks David. I'm still not sure I understand though. The files are the same files. Even if I just take a comma out of one of them, then compare them, all that markup will be in there.

The convert to text worked very well. I converted to text and then plopped them into Diffchecker and the differences were very apparent.

[Gregg Bell]

Okay, here's what I found that really worked for me. Going with David's idea of epub>txt and then comparing.

For the conversion from epub to txt I used this online converter:

www.epubconverter.com/epub-to-txt-converter/

Super fast and accurate.

For comparison I like this online tool.

https://text-compare.com/

Super precise and it has a 'next change' option (in between the compared texts) which really helps with a huge bunch of text.

The screenshot is kind of cluttered but you get the idea.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Thanks David. I'm still not sure I understand though. The files are the same files. Even if I just take a comma out of one of them, then compare them, all that markup will be in there.

But, they aren't the same files because the text in them is different. I don't know why the text is different, but whatever was done to make the text changes probably had side affects on the markup. Basically, something in the in the process to produce the two different versions has affected the markup in different ways.

The convert to text worked very well. I converted to text and then plopped them into Diffchecker and the differences were very apparent.

Glad it worked.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by davidfor

But, they aren't the same files because the text in them is different. I don't know why the text is different, but whatever was done to make the text changes probably had side affects on the markup. Basically, something in the in the process to produce the two different versions has affected the markup in different ways.

Thanks for the explanation.

[roger64]

Originally Posted by PeterT

The original issue was that Greg made changes in an epub that had been created from an LO document, and then wanted to make a print version of his book. It was suggested that one way to track down his changes would be to remake the ePub from LO and then compare the two epubs to find the changes.

LO has also a built-in compare tool, handy for tracking any change between two versions of the same odt file.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by roger64

LO has also a built-in compare tool, handy for tracking any change between two versions of the same odt file.

Yes. I look forward to using that. Thanks.