which is the most advanced pdf editor?

[kalos]

hello!

which is the most advanced pdf editor?

thanks!

[f0dder]

which is the most advanced pdf editor?

LaTeX ;-)

[kalos]

which is the most advanced pdf editor?

LaTeX ;-)

Really?
and how much time did it take for you to learn latex?

[Renegade]

which is the most advanced pdf editor?

LaTeX ;-)

Really?
and how much time did it take for you to learn latex?

I think that was tongue in cheek.

In my own experience, I've found that the best way to edit PDFs is with Adobe Illustrator. Which sucks. i.e. PDFs are not an editable format, or not reasonably editable. They are a final, publishing format. i.e. Use LaTeX to create your document, then export it to PDF.

[tomos]

If you know the PDF's are made with a particular editor, or a software that can edit them - then use that. (Otherwise I have no definite ideas.)

[brotman]

I'm fond of Serif's Page Plus.  It reads and writes PDF files, and offers extensive editing features.  It should be cheaper than Adobe products. it lists at around$100, plus it is often available in special offers  at reduced prices (as a longtime customer I got Page Plus X5 for around $50).    You can also get older and/or starter  versions for free on their website.  I dont know if their starter version includes PDF Support.  I think they've been PDF compatible since around V8 Note the current version v6 is equivalent to version 16. The page for X6 can be found here http://www.serif.com/pageplus/index.aspx .   The free downloads link is in the top bar.

Added Note:  FWIW: I was just at game giveaway of the day and they had an ad for Page Plus X5 for $30!  this version is only one off the current and DOES include PDF Support!  I've included the Direct link below in case the ad rotation removes the ad...

http://www.serif.com/pageplus/ppx5.aspx?MC=SERPPCRemPP&gclid=CJS0-8CB5rQCFUid4AodCVsARA

[tomos]

I'm fond of Serif's Page Plus.  It reads and writes PDF files, and offers extensive editing features.  It should be cheaper than Adobe products. it lists at around$100, plus it is often available in special offers  at reduced prices (as a longtime customer I got Page Plus X5 for around $50).    You can also get older and/or starter  versions for free on their website.  I dont know if their starter version includes PDF Support.  I think they've been PDF compatible since around V8 Note the current version v6 is equivalent to version 16. The page for X6 can be found here http://www.serif.com/pageplus/index.aspx .   The free downloads link is in the top bar.

Added Note:  FWIW: I was just at game giveaway of the day and they had an ad for Page Plus X5 for $30!  this version is only one off the current and DOES include PDF Support!  I've included the Direct link below in case the ad rotation removes the ad...

http://www.serif.com/pageplus/ppx5.aspx?MC=SERPPCRemPP&gclid=CJS0-8CB5rQCFUid4AodCVsARA

that sounds tempting (even if you never use it )
Is it particulary easy to use? Have you ever used it for print-shop/professional printing (any level)?

I do need to create a draft layout that wont be published anyway, so I might try it, thanks

[Curt]

@tomos - if the goal is print, not pdf, then X5 is excellent. If Pdf > not really.
I disagree with brotman on Serif's pdf capabilities, prior to X6 (which is fine):
Before X5 it was merely "import Pdf", never "Save as Pdf". X5 was merely ≤ Pdf 1.3

[relipse]

if you know php you can use dompdf to convert html to pdf
comes in handy
example code below:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  $contents = '<html><head></head><body><h2>Your Html Here</h2><center>hi</center></body></html>';
  require_once("lib/dompdf/dompdf_config.inc.php");
 
  set_time_limit (0);
  $dompdf = new DOMPDF();
  $dompdf->load_html($contents);
  //$dompdf->set_paper('paper', 'landscape');
  $dompdf->render();
 
  $dompdf->stream("Invoice", array("Attachment" => false));
  exit(0);

i used it to generate invoices at https://cworklog.com

[tomos]

@tomos - if the goal is print, not pdf, then X5 is excellent. If Pdf > not really.
I disagree with brotman on Serif's pdf capabilities, prior to X6 (which is fine):
Before X5 it was merely "import Pdf", never "Save as Pdf".

thanks Curt.
(also - sorry, I wasnt clear about printing - I meant print-shop/professional printing.)

[Paul Keith]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okular

Okular has additional features, including commenting on PDF documents, highlighting and drawing lines, geometric shapes, adding textboxes, and stamps. Text can be extracted to a text file. It is possible to select parts of the document and copy the text or image to the clipboard. Other features include trimming of white page borders and setting of bookmarks.

Best feature: Free
Worst feature: KDE based

Images from their site: http://okular.kde.org/screenshots.php





Con:

PDF editors have a weakness in that they are often PDF editors to begin with and not applications with PDF export generation

Full-screen reading is clunky. It's really an editor and not a PDF reader. On the plus side, there's really no dedicated "true" "no little toolbar popping up" full screen pdf reader I know of except for Adobe Reader and the old Lite version.

[tomos]

I wonder how Scribus would do...

Scribus
www.scribus.net/
Professional layout and publishing software supporting EPS and SVG import/export, and PDF support. [GNU GPL]

designed to export to PDF - I dont know if it can import/open PDFs, but if it can I reckon it would be pretty powerful.

Latest version is 1.4.etc
The release notes for 1.4.0 says
"Now that Scribus 1.4.0 has been released, the Scribus Team will focus on stabilizing the 1.5 development branch, which will comprise amazing new features like support for PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-4 and PDF/E, Mesh Gradients, native PDF import"
http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/1.4.0_Release
my emphasis - I'm not 100% sure what it means though

[joiwind]

... there's really no dedicated "true" "no little toolbar popping up" full screen pdf reader I know of except for Adobe Reader and the old Lite version.

What about Sumatra ?

[Paul Keith]

I did not try Sumatra for long but if I'm not mistaken, the experience reminded me of Evince minus the toolbar.

Yes you had full screen like any pdf editor (except exemptions like Okular) but when you want a comforting contrasting black background and transitions, there was none.

It's just a hide toolbars option like a browser.

Adobe's full screen feels very slick to me especially when used on a netbook without a mouse.

It's not e-ink level of slick but the hotkeys feel like what you naturally stray towards to. Ctrl+ with zoom. No gimmicky pop-up slidehow button. Transitions. Even the sluggishness becomes a relaxant feature of sorts for a black text on white bg heavy pdf.

For pdfs with lots of image or are meant to be skimmed like manuals it does not have the same effect but I'd be hard pressed to find someone reading those in a full screen.

I think Scribus is just too sporadic to be the most advanced.

It's the only free kind but the interface just keeps changing sometimes.

I'm speaking as a Scribus ignorant user though.

My experience with it, is solely to replace Adobe Reader on Linux wherein I would manually retype a PDF into Scribus. Change the fonts and change the text to something other than white. Add highlights. Resize the blocks (which Scribus to my knowledge is very unique in due to it relying on a block frame type of typing/editing) and I would get a pdf that's worse when it's shown full screen in Adobe but very relaxing and easy on my eyes to skim when in a non-full screen and lightweight PDF viewer especially as I tend to design it like a bunch of longer more vertical index cards.

In that experience, one Scribus version seemingly had more default colors than a newer Scribus version I used. I don't know if it's a custom one as the titles except version numbers are the same.

It did not help that there's Scribus-ng which when I tried, did not seem to be any much different on the surface than Scribus and as I do not know anything about colors to begin with, I had to resort to the default colors which Scribus even touts as a feature.

There's also many redundancy in the actual site that makes me skeptical about the design direction of Scribus because the actual program has the same redundancies. They obviously have some good things but just the way to jump around the wikis and just the way you then get the software and open the software and then have two ways to edit the formatting of a text... a part of me thinks it's more fitting to be called a word processor...a sort of OpenOffice Writer+ than a PDF editor/desktop publisher so it can support more formats and streamline the ui more which would hopefully streamline the website's more but it's more of a musing of how many confusing things Scribus has.

It has books, click on the book on the site, you jump to a wiki instead of a library on the site.
It has PDF features but you can't even understand it until you understand what editing options will happen in the CTRL+Y window, what editing will happen if you do not ctrl+y, what editing is in what section in their version of the property windows and that's how you start with the basics.

Any introduction I read on the program keeps ranting on and on about rulers but it's not very easy to spot an instant template style auto-margin settings anywhere in the program that instantly quickly aligns several blocks of frame nor do you really have a text w/ image template layer, a to be reviewed layer or even a straight forward text edit layer. So many individual interfaces to battle with.

The long text editor is a mini-rtf editor style but it keeps insisting it's some form of story editor and so every formatting option is a search for the right term Scribus' uses and if you do not know anything about desktop publishing, the only consistent part is the margins and the height/length numbers as that's in every new file and it's not like it's on the level of Scrivener where you start getting why you should stick to this template over the other template. It just pretends like you know what to do with a new file and so god forbid you actually import a file first.

A lot of these sound like nitpicks and they are but that just haunts Scribus since time immemorial and I'm not the first to remark on it and I don't think I would be the last. It's just a very very unique unknown identity in the realm of pdf editors and it shouldn't be. It should be OpenOffice+ or full featured Scrivener for Linux or Calibre for PDFs or Word/PowerPoint combined but it just keeps insisting on desktop publishing to even be remotely be any advanced something.

It's really the definition of a confused software. It's a simple software with some advanced feature but because it likes to play in a direction it's not offering any superior concept to compared to it's competitor, it just does not become advanced and it gives excuses for why it's not advanced ("cause DTP is not this or that") GIMP at least knows it's competing with Photoshop.

Scribus has these genius oh so advanced words:
http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Word_Processing_vs_DTP

A DTP application is not intended for creating text — at least if one is talking about a large amount of text, ie. many pages. For this purpose, it's better to use a word processor or a simple text editor (with or without markup). After the text is finished it can be loaded into the DTP application. From this point, only minor changes to the text are done in the DTP application — you don't want to edit long texts this way. This separation comes from the division of responsibilities in professional publishing: one person creates the text content, and another person does the layout.

Hello??? Scribus being more of an indexed card DTP than it's pro equivalent makes it easy to create text inside if it only autosaves and has an index card database like Scrivener. It just insists on not having a storage clipboard within the program editor so you can move section 1 of chapter 2 from within the story editor but it just insists that it has to be a DTP and so the editor tends to be stuck on a page yet the way to jump from section to section is more intuitive when you're creating text rather than editing and copy-pasting predefined text as then there's an actual reason to have the story editor that does not mimic the real time elements of direct editing but it tries to be part-Lyx/Latex philosophy, part-DTP, part annoying limiting page only story editor with no preview, part mclunky, part margin hogging, layer inducing DTP/PDF editor exporting whatisname.

You really have to experience it to really judge for yourself I guess. For my non-pro needs, it's a wonderful one of a kind free software but as any one label: DTP, PDF editor, PDF exporter

...it's bonkers. It's bonkers when it's trying to be a DTP and it's bonkers when it's not being a DTP:

Only in Scribus land where you can have a software that's aimed at professionals and then say:

Something probably not a good idea is to plan to use Scribus for the first time on an important piece of work with a tight deadline, like tomorrow morning. Even those who have some DTP experience would likely be frustrated by that task (and would probably know better than to attempt it).

If Scribus just makes up it's mind and focus a little bit on text to page movability and hiding some micro-numbers as advanced, this thing could be a legit advanced Scrivener but arrghh...

If it could make it's image importing more direct in the default toolbar, IMO it would be OneNote already minus an actual database to store the output and a mini tray note icon pop-up.

Also I don't know if this is the frustration speaking but when I import a normal pdf into Scribus, a part of me feels like I just imported a .doc into OpenOffice especially the early years. It could just be that I find the commands much more comforting when creating pdfs in it but yes, Scribus imports PDFs and when it exports it, it even has a stoplight sign for what section of your PDFs is out of alignment or hidden but it's just not a program where you can immediately jump to editing if you just want to edit.

It's advanced in the same way any graphics program beyond Paint is advanced.

Again, if I recall, there are layers. There's hyper-specific numbers for fonts.

Lots of unique stuff but it's not really a DTP or PDF editor in the traditional sense. It's not just Photoshop with a weird interface like GIMP. It's like if both Photoshop and GIMP focused entirely on improving their text inserting features but decided they still want to be a graphics program in everything including the lay-out so you get a sort of advanced way to move/reflow/work with text and image positions but then the actual environment remains the same as a photo editor so the features, the toolbars, the philosophy...it exist but it's all over the place.

[Curt]

I do need to create a draft layout that wont be published anyway, so I might try it, thanks

-of course there is also the 'free' Adobe InCopy / InDesign CS2...

http://www.adobepress.com/articles/article.asp?p=466357

------------

Adobe desktop publishing software

Adobe InCopy is a professional word processing application made by Adobe Systems. It is integrated to Adobe InDesign; however, it is sold separately and is not included in any Creative Suite edition; the current version is Adobe InCopy CS6. This desktop publishing software is primarily used to publish newspapers and magazines and is used primarily by editors.

InCopy allows the editor to write, edit, and design (style, font, etc.) the publishable copy. The software includes standard word processing features such as "spell check", "track changes", and "word count", etc., and has preview viewing modes for fitting copy to the text layout, allowing the editor to visually ascertain every design element fits in the publication layout format used.


Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing software application produced by Adobe Systems. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers and books. InDesign can also publish content suitable for tablet devices in conjunction with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite.

Graphic designers and production artists are the principal users, creating and laying out periodical publications, posters, and print media. It also supports export to EPUB and SWF formats to create digital publications, and content suitable for consumption on tablet computers. The Adobe InCopy word processor uses the same formatting engine as InDesign.

[tomos]

I do need to create a draft layout that wont be published anyway, so I might try it, thanks

-of course there is also the 'free' Adobe InCopy / InDesign CS2...

http://www.adobepress.com/articles/article.asp?p=466357

yes, hadnt thought of that yet (believe it or not)

[Curt]

I wonder how Scribus would do...

-mixed...
Scribus was not able to properly read any of my homemade pdf files. It would open them, but not show any content. These were made with various Pdf desktop 'creators", like Nitro. On the other hand Scribus was doing very fine with a Pdf file created by Wikipedia. Even though the document was written in Danish, it was almost 100% right, and ready for editing. Wow!

Scribus comes in many languages, incl. Danish.

I was somewhat surprised by what you didn't tell, tomos! But maybe your post was made a few hours before Scribes announced version 1.42 later the same day. It has a new engine, so now they also offer a genuine 64-bit version :-)

Edit:
Near-reading the fore-mentioned Scribus version of a Wikipedia Pdf file, I now realize that every "active" (Wikipedia linked) word is missing!

[Curt]

just got this in an email:

http://newsletters.wondershare.com/pdf-editor/201301/

PDF Editor v2.0 + OCR Plug-in

$89.95　Now $44.97

An Ultrafast PDF Editor You Can Afford !

Enables you to edit PDF text, images, and objects, add comments, merge, or split PDF files effortlessly and effectively.


Edit PDFs Exactly like a Word Processor.
Convert to Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Epub (Exclusive)
Edit or Convert Scanned PDFs (Only available in OCR plug-in)
Merge, split and extract PDF pages with ease
Add comments, annotations and more in PDFs

It should be noted that many people don't trust Wondershare too much.

[tomos]

Thanks Curt for the Scribus update and testing. In fairness it's not designed as an editor of files created by others.
But then that's the problem with the PDF format in general - it's simply not designed to be re-edited at all.

Have you tried Illustrator as an editor as Renegade suggests? (or anything else from the 'suite')

[Curt]

-I only installed Photoshop. Well, at first I also installed Acrobat Pro 8, but it didn't run well, so I removed it and decided not to install the suite. But just typing this is making me think I should install it! I think my main reason for not having done so yet is, that I haven't checked out what Illustrator really is, so I don't know what I am missing...

[tomos]

my main reason for not having done so yet is, that I haven't checked out what Illustrator really is, so I don't know what I am missing...

it's actually a vector drawing programme
I have CS4 installed here, I'll try it out with a couple of PDFs. Even if it is good, the CS2 version wouldnt be able to cope with more recent PDF versions, so it probably isnt worth installing (for that).

[Curt]

-I think you're right.
Further more I have a 2009 copy of Xara Xtreme Pro 5 laying around somewhere.
And I don't draw...

[jpfx]

foxit pdf editor used to be excellent for the job.
However, it is now part of their business suite which is the most expensive version.
It's still a stand-alone program within the suite.
Last I checked I don't think the installer created an icon for it and it was only checking the install dir that revealed it still existed.

failing that, probably adobe livecycle which is now a separate product from acrobat pro.

[Curt]

Microsoft Office Word 2013

Open a PDF in Word, and edit content just as if you created it in Word

[kalos]

Microsoft Office Word 2013

Open a PDF in Word, and edit content just as if you created it in Word

this doesnt work :/

which Office you use?