Are there tools available specifically designed to compare ebooks?

I was reading an article recently about the changes between Mitt Romney's hardcover first edition of his book 'No Apologies' and his later paperback edition. In this article there was some speculation as to the reasons for these changes. It struck me that the it would be very interesting in general to compare the exact changes between different editions of a given book over time. It seems to me that using ebook copies of each edition would make such a comparison possible (and easy). So I ask you - does such a utility to extract differences between ebooks exist?

Jake Feasel

• ebooks

Comments

Answer by johntait.org

EPUB file are just ZIP files, so you can unzip them and just use diff.

Oxygen XML Author, which I use to author EPUB ebooks (DITA/DocBook), comes with a separate program called Diff Directories.

If you select "browse for archive file", you can compare the text of EPUB files directly.

Comments

• Jake Feasel: Thanks, I know that option is available. However I was hoping to learn of something more specifically tailored to book comparison.
• Joe: @JakeFeasel : this seems to answer your question ... if it doesn't, could you elaborate on what you're looking for? (and note -- the answer shows XML Author, but also mentions `diff`, which is a unix command line tool, and will present just the lines that changed (or with a little context if you give the `-u` flag).