I held off on Windows 10 for as long as I could until Adobe, and therefore my job, required it. Now this nonsense. I hope this isn't the start of them joining on the web DRM bandwagon.
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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What are people using to edit/sign PDFs. Adobe is a nightmare and I’d rather use anything else
I don't get why PDFs are so hard to open. The format has been around for ever. Why does Adobe have such a grasp on it, and why isn't it as common to open as a txt?
There are free programs that'll open it, but it's few and far between. It's a pain in the ass to find one.
Edit.
I looked it up. Adobe created PDF, but:
@WarmSoda @Wojtek Foxit pdf reader's not bad.
Does it still look like it comes from 2005?
Foxit Reader has decent PDF editing built in. I use it all the time. I think they call the pen mode "comments", but you can also load your signature as an image file.
The only time I use (pirated) Adobe Acrobat is when I need to edit existing content in PDFs, like fixing layout or editing text.
Foxit can also OCR it and allow editing I believe.
LibreOffice Draw
Preview on macOS can do it. While it obviously doesn’t help everyone I’m not sure some Mac users realize there’s a built in tool for it
I’ve tried it in preview, it’s just not great. Or maybe I just haven’t mastered it yet… but it never intuitively does what I want it do
I only ever used preview. I tried Adobe stuff a few times but it was so horribly cluttered. So far preview could do everything I needed.
Okular
No (or very limited) editing in Okular...
Okular lets you add text, highlight, underline, squiggle, strike out, notes, lines, shapes, and digital signatures.
I have used Foxit/Phantom both personally and professionally for years now with no complaints
Thanks, might switch. I'm tired of Adobe running ten tons of crap in the background.
Happy PDF-XChange user here. Fair pricing for home users / small businesses, great feature set, stable, regular updates that actually improve the product.
Actually had complaints of less-technical users at work when by some weird accident the Adobe product returned (sneakily bundled installer?) or when a Windows decided that PDFs are to be opened with Edge now, because the users wanted PDF-XChange back. Normally users either don't notice or don't care.
On all my Macs, Preview is set as the default app for handling PDFs, and I use it for signing, adding text, rearranging and deleting pages; works flawlessly. Fuck Acrobat Reader / Pro.
If I need to do something more complicated, I'll open it in Illustrator.
Apparently Word is a good PDF editor. Or Inkscape for single page documents.
Inkscape now supports multi-page documents! The PDF importer was also recently overhauled.
Inkscape at this point is the “hold my beer” of PDF editors, able to edit absolutely anything on the page.
Only problem is Inkscape can't import or embed PDF fonts. It can convert text to paths during import, but that's it.