Compare two revisions

Compare lays two sheets over each other. Lines only on the old sheet show in red, lines only on the new sheet in blue, and lines on both in a muted gray. The colors are named in the legend under the sheet: "Only on the old sheet", "Only on the new sheet", "On both".

Compare two sheets

1. Open both issues. They can be pages of the same PDF or of different PDFs; open them together as one set (see Work with several files at once).
2. Choose the Compare tab on the right.
3. Pick the Old sheet and the New sheet. The new sheet starts as the one you are on. When several files are open, each sheet's file name is shown after its name.
4. Choose Compare.

Result: MarkupCraft shows the new sheet with the old one mixed in, the legend appears, and the tab says "Comparing <old> (old) with <new> (new). Markups on the new sheet stay editable."

Fade between old and new

Drag the Old and new slider. All the way left shows only the old sheet, all the way right only the new one, the middle shows both. Sliding back and forth is often the quickest way to see a small change.

Line the sheets up

If the two issues were plotted with a different margin, size or rotation, everything looks changed. Fix it:

By two points (best):

1. Choose Align by two points. The view shows only the old sheet.
2. Click a sharp feature you can find on both sheets, such as a column grid intersection. The tab counts the steps ("1 of 4").
3. Click a second feature, far from the first, such as the opposite grid corner.
4. The view switches to the new sheet. Click the first feature again.
5. Click the second feature again.

Result: "Lined up: old sheet scaled 100.00%, turned 0.00°. Nudge to fine-tune." The old sheet is moved, scaled and turned to fit. EscEsc cancels while you are picking. Zoom in on each feature before clicking for a precise fit.

By nudging: use the four arrow buttons under "Line up" to move the old sheet. Choose the step (0.25, 1, 5 or 20 pt; 72 pt is one inch on the paper). The tab says how far it has moved.

Reset removes the alignment and the nudges.

Mark the changes

While comparing, you are on the new sheet and every tool works. Draw clouds around the changes as you find them; they belong to the new sheet and stay when you stop comparing.

Stop comparing

Choose Stop comparing, or go to another sheet. The alignment is remembered for the same pair of sheets until you close the set.

Good to know

• Compare works on what is drawn, pixel by pixel. It does not know that a line moved; it shows the old position in one color and the new position in the other.
• Text that reflowed, a changed title block date or a different plot style shows up as changes too.
• A scanned sheet compared with a plotted one is noisy: scanning blurs and shifts lines.
• Comparing by text (a list of what changed) and clouding the differences automatically are not built yet.