Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?
mikiem:
FWIW...
1 thing to remember when talking about, rating, trying PDF conversion &/or editing software, is that there are several ways, programs to create PDFs now days -- the PDFs created are not always the same internally. What works for PDFs created in one program might fail miserably on the output of another. There are quite a few cheaper PDF conversion programs out, but in my experience how well they work, or if they work at all depends on what created the PDF you feed them. A few examples with ratings/comments for Quick-PDF [http://www.quick-pdf.com/] can be found here [http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/category/quick-pdfcom/].
FWIW RE: Serif...
AFAIK -- & from what I can recall (which may not be *totally* accurate) -- Serif was started years & years ago by Russian coders going up against Adobe & quite possibly Aldus (it was that long ago) (assuming anyone else is old enough to remember Aldus). They had excellent products, but not a lot of marketing clout in a then very closed-minded publishing & graphics arts community, where it was felt your professional credibility rested on the price of your tools, not your results. I think they then started licensing code or collaborating on niche products like a vector-based Dinosaur Drawing program one of my boys used back in a grade school project, eventually I believe turning over marketing (or selling themselves?) to one of the mass marketers similar to Broderbund. Their initial DTP program was dumbed down a little to compete with the brand new Microsoft Publisher, over the years becoming the PagePlus discussed here. You'll usually find deals on their software on various shareware &/or PC magazine sites like vnunet, at software surplus sites, at discount PC parts & accessory sites, & sometimes in the cheap software racks in retail stores.
Darwin:
@rjbull - I received an offer on PDF Converter Professional 5 today - $69.95. PM me if you'd like more information.
On other fronts, I wrote and thought I had posted a brief update on Serif PagePlus X2. Can't see/find it anywhere, so must be further down the path to senility than I thought :o
At any rate, PP X2 is quite nice WRT its PDF editing capabilities. However, there are a couple of limitations that I'd like to highlight (though admittedly they are probably more related to entrenched perceptions of how things should be done on my part, thanks to years of working with first Adobe Acrobat and then the Scansoft/Nuance offerings):
1. I can see no way to scroll though a document a la Word procesor (and yes, I am aware that PP X2 is NOT a Word processor ;)). True, one can view pages tiled across the work space, but this is not the same thing.
2. Unless one has an OCR application installed, there is no way that you can open a pdf that has been generated from image files together and edit the text. This is a serious limitation for many PDF editing applications.
Just my two bits.
I like PagePlus X2, but am much happier using PDFCP 5 to edit PDFs.... :P
Darwin:
PS to rjbull - should have noted that you can often pick up boxed versions of Nuance apps in places like Staples cheaper than the on-line discounts. I paid $79.95 US for the upgrade from PDFCP 4 to 5, having missed the opportunity to buy it for $79 Cdn. at Staples. At the time the Cdn. dollar was around parity so I didn't really care, and suspect that I saved a bit because I didn't have to pay any taxes on the download version! Besides, it's the "green" thing to do - who needs CDs/DVDs and all the packaging. But still...
cchian:
Last week I recall Amazon.com and Buy.com advertising PDF Converter Professional 5 for about $62 shipped. Newegg has a downloadable version for $64.99. Prices seem to fluctuate often. The documentation indicates this product uses online activation. I am trying to decide between this product and Acrobat 9 Standard which I can get as an upgrade for $99.
Darwin:
Last week I recall Amazon.com and Buy.com advertising PDF Converter Professional 5 for about $62 shipped. Newegg has a downloadable version for $64.99. Prices seem to fluctuate often. The documentation indicates this product uses online activation. I am trying to decide between this product and Acrobat 9 Standard which I can get as an upgrade for $99.
-cchian (December 11, 2008, 02:24 PM)
--- End quote ---
There you go! Can't really comment on the PDFCP vs Adobe Acrobat Std issue, though... My vague understanding is that PDFCP is roughly equivalent to Acrobat Standard, but I could be wrong about that. I no longer have any idea what features are included in what versions of Acrobat, so...
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