<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Hi, Hans.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">My complicated C-programmer mind says to take each PDF, process it in binary form and spit out a new PDF with <b class="">all timestamp digits changed</b> to zeroes, then use the postprocessed files for comparison. That’s probably not a practical approach as it stands, but it might spark an idea that could work.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Victor</div><div class="">_________</div><br class=""><div><div class="">On Feb 1, 2017, at 10:31:10, der.hans <<a href="mailto:PLUGd@lufthans.com" class="">PLUGd@LuftHans.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class="">Am 01. Feb, 2017 schwätzte Joseph Sinclair so:<br class=""><br class="">moin moin,<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Have you checked DiffPDF?<br class="">It's supposed to do what you're looking for, although it's no-longer actively maintained (author took it closed-source :( ).<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Not familiar with it. Ah, comparepdf for the command line version.<br class=""><br class="">comparepdf -ca web1.pdf web2.pdf<br class=""><br class="">Will have to test with it to verify some basic tolerances.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Another alternative might be to use pdf2ps (part of ghostscript) to<br class="">transform into postscript and compare that, but you may need to do<br class="">more massaging as timestamps and such would probably still be in the<br class="">postscript.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">I tried that. I expected the datestamps to carry over, but they appear to<br class="">not have. The files are still different, though :(.<br class=""><br class="">I was thinking pdf2png or pdf2jpg type of thing might work. Have to check<br class="">if I always get the same output.<br class=""><br class="">ciao,<br class=""><br class="">der.hans<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">On 02/01/2017 01:29 AM, der.hans wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">moin moin,<br class=""><br class="">I have some dynamically generated PDFs coming from a pool of web servers.<br class=""><br class="">Each server should be generating a PDF that looks exactly the same as from<br class="">all the other servers.<br class=""><br class="">The PDF generation includes sticking in a few timestamps and possibly some<br class="">hostnames or other dynamic content. The dynamic content eliminates the<br class="">option of just using checksums to verify the output file is the same from<br class="">all of the web servers.<br class=""><br class="">Any suggestions on how I can write a command line check. Needing to<br class="">install a script would be far less than ideal in this situation. Funnily<br class="">enough, needing to install a package would be less of an issue in this<br class="">particular case, especially something in CentOS 6.<br class=""><br class="">Me being me, I did try to just grep out the lines with timestamps :). That<br class="">didn't quite work :(. That probably indicates the files aren't as exactly<br class="">the same as I hope.<br class=""><br class="">I didn't see a pdf2sanity tool. pdf2text won't really work as I need to<br class="">verify the graphic content and hopefully the PDF wrapper.<br class=""><br class="">ciao,<br class=""><br class="">der.hans<br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class=""></blockquote><br class="">-- <br class=""># <a href="http://www.lufthans.com/" class="">http://www.LuftHans.com/</a> <a href="http://www.phxlinux.org/" class="">http://www.PhxLinux.org/</a><br class=""># "Wasted day. Wasted life. Dessert, please." -- Steven Meretzky---------------------------------------------------<br class="">PLUG-discuss mailing list - <a href="mailto:PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org" class="">PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org</a><br class="">To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:<br class=""><a href="http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss" class="">http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss</a></div></div></div><br class=""></body></html>