Maybe stupid Consider this (you must have cow.pdf in the same dir): %%test-1.tex \setupcolors[state=start] \setupinteraction[state=start] \starttext \startfrontmatter \completecontent \stopfrontmatter \startbodymatter \chapter{Chapter} \section{Section} \input tufte \externalfigure[cow] \chapter{Chapter 2} \section{Section} \input knuth \stopbodymatter \stoptext with markii $>texexec --pdf test-1.tex $>cp test-1.pdf test-1a.pdf $>texexec --pdf test-1.tex $>pdftoppm test-1a.pdf test-1a- $>pdftoppm test-1.pdf test-1- $> cmp test-1a.pdf test-1.pdf test-1a.pdf test-1.pdf differ: byte 35086, line 220 of course at least /ID is different $>for j in `seq 1 4`; do cmp test-1a--$j.ppm test-1--$j.ppm ; done and, again of course, *no differences* because the files are equals page-by-page -- so they are equals Is there a way more quick and clean than for cycle and ppm files? -- luigi