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PDF-XChange Viewer ($FREE version) - Mini-Review

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IainB:
Updated: 2012-11-27 regarding the OCR feature of PDF-XChange Viewer ($FREE version).
Under Needs improvement:
OCR functionality: seems to work fine on very short, simple document layouts with clear/legible print, but for longer/more complex documents or with mixed and smaller fonts it "hangs" at 67% on the progress bar. Very frustrating.
This gets it 1 x Thumbs-Down, since it is a claimed functionality but which seems, for most purposes to be likely to be well-nigh useless.

+ made other minor amendments.

cyberdiva:
I hadn't been aware that PDF-XChange Viewer had any OCR capability.  However, very recently the company made PDF-XChange Lite 2012 (with which one can print to PDF, something I couldn't do with PDF-XChange Viewer) free for non-commercial home users.  Moreover, I found that even when the resulting PDF was an image rather than selectable text, the OCR capability worked very well to render the image as readable, selectable text.  Admittedly, I didn't try this on a wide variety of documents and document styles, but I was surprised and pleased with the two times I used the OCR feature.  So I now have free software that will read pdfs, will permit me to print to pdf, and will do OCR.   :Thmbsup:

IainB:
@cyberdiva: Thanks for the tip about PDF-XChange Lite 2012.
I have downloaded it for a trial. I shall compare it's output to that from PDFCreator (which I have used for years).

DrBB01:
I have used the free PDF X-Change Viewer for several years and--for the most part--have been very pleased. [The most recent updates have occasionally crashed, but I suspect that is due to a conflict with other software I recently installed and that I will be removing soon.] I have occasionally tried other free PDF readers, but none has had the features of PDF X-Change Viewer.

The two features I use the most are sticky notes and highlighting because I often review drafts/documents created by others and use these functions to provide feedback. Another one I use is the typewriter function, which I use to complete forms in PDF documents that were set up to be printed and completed manually. I used to use a separate text box to complete each entry in the form, but I recently realized that by setting the font size appropriately, and using the space bar and enter key strategically, I can often complete a form using only one or two text boxes. If you want to ensure no changes can be made to the form, you can print the document to another PDF, which "flattens" the text box feature but leaves the text itself intact.

I have not used the new OCR feature yet. It sounds like it has a way to go to be ready for "prime time" based on comments here. I trust Tracker Software is working on fixing this soon. I have occasionally considered upgrading to the paid version, but haven't found a really good reason to do so yet!  

IainB:
I have updated the review in the opening post thus:
EDIT - 2013-01-04: After having had the opportunity to test out the OCR functionality on quite a lot of documents now, I have found that, whereas my initial testing of it seemed to indicate that it seemed more likely to "hang" on documents, now it seems more likely to complete the OCR successfully!   :tellme:
Therefore, since I am still on the same (current) version 2.5.207, then this is presumably attributable to a change in the types of PDF files that I am throwing at the reader, rather than a bug.
So, it just seems that certain types of PDF files might throw the OCR functionality into a "hang" state, but when it does do the OCR, it seems to do it very well. I'll leave the thumbs-up rating as-is though, because the OCR functionality is still a major feature/function, though it works better than I originally thought.

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