Hi, I want to know if GroupDocs supports side-by-side viewer capability after comparing two documents.
GroupDocs provides solutions for both document comparison and viewing. Here’s how you can achieve a side-by-side viewer for comparing two documents:
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GroupDocs.Comparison API
The GroupDocs.Comparison API is specifically designed for comparing documents programmatically. It provides the capability to highlight differences between two or more documents. However, it works as a backend API, meaning it generates comparison results (e.g., a marked-up document showing changes or a detailed comparison report) but does not directly provide a UI for viewing the comparison side-by-side. -
GroupDocs.Viewer API
The GroupDocs.Viewer API allows you to render and display documents in a browser or application. By integrating this API, you can create a custom UI to show two or more documents side-by-side (e.g. view source, target and output files). This can complement the comparison results by letting users visually inspect both documents.
How to Achieve Side-by-Side Viewing:
- Use GroupDocs.Comparison to compare the documents and generate the comparison output.
- Use GroupDocs.Viewer to render the original and/or comparison output files in a custom side-by-side layout for a seamless user experience.
By combining both APIs, you can create a robust solution for document comparison with side-by-side visualization capabilities.
And yes, it’s possible to use both APIs together in a single application. You’ll need either GroupDocs.Total for Java license for that or separate licenses for each API.
Below are the code examples and documentation references:
- Document comparison code and developers guide.
- Code to render source file to HTML, PDF or image format to prepare a preview, here’s the wiki.