Image via WikipediaAdobe Acrobat 9 was officially launched on 26th June 2008. Its reader made available on 2nd July 2008.Previously, we reviewed into "Creation of Compelling Contents" while it was still in beta version.
For this entry, we will look into a feature under 'Enhanced Collaboration' for document comparison.
Let's get started.
- Convert documents into PDF files first. This renders one not able to use it for comparing source codes :) (you still can, but it would take longer time than using RCS (Revision Control System). Check out one sample here). RCS is considered outdated and these days, mostly people uses CVS (Concurrent Version Control).
- Select the files to be compared and give Acrobat 9 a hint of what these documents are (texts, objects or images). This will make the comparison faster.
- Press 'ok'
- It took 1 minute to compare two text documents with 39 pages.
- It will output you with summary first.
Pros & Cons:
It uses position (x,y) of documents as a mean of comparison. Thus, for contents which are the same but with one space different of up or down, it would be indicated as 'replaced' --> Pink color. Blue color indicates new items (marked as 'insert')
It is also able to tell you what's old and new ?
It is not totally perfect, but I reckon that it is good for detecting small changes. Very useful for those in legal industry where one needs razor shape eyes to detect just a few-words-twist which can make a world of difference.
However, If you like to read and don't mind to read everything (top to toe) again, then this is going to spoil your mood. But if you just hope to detect changes, this is your ultimate tool.
Generally, this feature is very useful for whoever that has to deal with documents, especially for book publishers, journalists and project managers who have to keep many revisions of documents.
It also comes with some semantic technology features to inform you about hidden information. But it is not so useful yet, the oncology defined is not so meaningful to end-users (perhaps for the developers). This feature is known as "Examine Document". Nevertheless, I predict that this will evolve into most sophisticated feature in future versions.
It is a lot of fun using this feature to read through two similar documents (especially for those people who don't enjoy reading) and I feel that we can all use it as a fast reading tool. Personally, it could become my reading companion.
Acrobat 9 also is a fast performance software. Use it to compare images and other thing and that will save you even more time when it rises to the occasion.
And finally, the compared results can be saved into a PDF document, so that you can save time not to compare them again.
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