comparxiv

A wrapper of latexdiff to compare two version of an arXiv preprint with a single command.

Disclaimer: This is a beta version. Despite extensive testing, it does not work for all preprints on arXiv.

INSTALLATION

You can install comparxiv via

pip install comparxiv

or direct from source.

git clone https://github.com/temken/comparxiv.git
cd comparxiv 
python setup.py install

USAGE

There are three ways to run comparxiv:

(A) ID: The easiest way is to simply provide a preprint ID such as

comparxiv hep-ph/0612370

This will compare the two latest versions of the paper.

(B) ID + version: To compare version N with N-1, you can either run

comparxiv 1709.06573vN 

or

comparxiv 1709.06573 N

(B) ID + two versions: To compare two specified version N and M, there are also two possible ways to give the input. Either

comparxiv 1905.06348 N M

or

comparxiv 1905.06348vN M 

The order of the two arguments (N and M) matters, the second version (M) is interpreted as the new version.

A successful run will generate a pdf and open it.

For more details and options, run

comparxiv --help

DEPENDENCIES

• python and pip
• a tex distribution with pdflatex and latexdiff (*)
• argparse (**)
• arxiv (**)
• requests (**)
• tqdm (**)

(*) Are part of any tex distribution, which can be installed on Linux e.g. via

sudo apt-get install texlive-full

or on macOS e.g. using homebrew.

brew cask install mactex

(**): Get installed automatically via pip, if necessary.

VERSIONS

• v0.1 (24/04/2020): First version released.

To-do list

Planned features

• comparison of figures
• support of latex papers on biorxiv (?)

AUTHORS & CONTACT

The author of this script is Timon Emken.

For questions, bug reports or other suggestions please contact emken@chalmers.se.

LICENSE

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful for this useful tutorial by Scott Torborg about python packaging.