Live data from Hacker News

Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

vincentuden.xyz

51–60 of 174 posts

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#51

What I hate about Preview on macOS is that all opened PDFs are kept in memory as opposed to freeing up the memory when the PDF is not active. Look I know that I probably should not have 200 PDFs open, but Preview should not be consuming 40GB of memory.

As someone who routinely switches between multi-gigabyte PDF files, I appreciate that they all stay loaded in memory. Ain't nobody got time to re-render and re-index those files every time I switch documents..

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#52

No mention of Sumatra PDF[1]? Windows (only), open source, uses MuPDF. [1] https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/

ok thank you so much... finally an open source pdf reader thats not acrobat that works (hopefully, still testing). on the issue of pdf forms, my gosh they just should not exist, thats what web pages are for.

pdf forms are pretty convenient when you need to fill it in, print and send to government by snail main or show in person or sent digitally. Happens in some places more often than in others.

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF is no longer a single format. You have to specify what type of PDF. Many will not open in anything but Acrobat. For example the Wisconsin state dept. of natural resources converted nearly all of their permit/form PDFs to "Dynamic XFA (XML Form Architecture) PDF". Which is basically a PDF without content that pulls down all it's content from the web. It even still, ostensibly, supports Flash (swf) animations. But…

>Which is basically a PDF without content that pulls down all its content from the web. …why? Isn’t that literally a website at this point? What benefit can you possibly have over a link ?

Adobe gets to charge somebody a big bag of money.

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#54
Pretty neat, I always appreciate it when someone can give the reasoning behind their programming choices.

Its a good start but some issues (on Win10 using the binary from releases) that became pretty apparent right off the bat. I took an instructables page[1], that on Windows I had used 'print to PDF' to print it from Firefox into one long PDF. Using 'j' to scroll down, stops at the end of the page but keeps pretending its going down so you end up down a bunch of virtual lines that don't exist, 'J' will move you to the next page but not to the top of the next page? Two copies of the same file (but from different places, one from the NAS and one from the local disk) open, then neither one of them rendered. The status line suggested they were on different pages but there was nothing on the screen.

That said, it started quickly and time to first page render was fast (with a single file open). I tried it on a more conventional file (datasheet) and again with 'j' or 'k' it moves the page down or up and leave blank space where the page was, neither the next or previous pages are anywhere to be seen until you type 'J' or 'K'. That's a bit unintuitive.

[1] https://www.instructables.com/HackerBox-0110-Synth/

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#56

Preview.app is actually one of the few first-party Apple apps that I really miss when using a non-macOS computer.

that plus the quick look from smashing the space bar in Finder. selecting a file and hitting space is muscle memory for me, and the first time I do it on a non-macOS computer it just feels broken to me.

Microsoft PowerToys has this functionality, called Peek: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/peek

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#57

Preview.app is actually one of the few first-party Apple apps that I really miss when using a non-macOS computer.

I came here to say how spoiled we are as Mac users. Preview is genuinely the best PDF reader. Full stop.

Unchallenged, and for something like 20 plus years running.

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#58
post #57

Preview.app is actually one of the few first-party Apple apps that I really miss when using a non-macOS computer.

I came here to say how spoiled we are as Mac users. Preview is genuinely the best PDF reader . Full stop. Unchallenged, and for something like 20 plus years running.

Interesting. I personally never liked Preview. No way to configure it to open maximized, so every time I open a Preview window, I have to maximize it manually.

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#59
post #25

What are people using as a free (edit: or lifetime license) PDF editor for business use / non-technical people? Whenever we try anything else we inevitably run into something we need acrobat for.

Not sure why would anyone edit a pdf. To me this is a format you export to, not a draft/working doc format.

As much as I agree, I've lost track of how often someone's given me a PDF form to fill out. While driving down to the print store during business hours for a scanner is possible, it's a lot easier to make a sacrifice to the dark gods of format abuse instead.

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#60
post #25

What are people using as a free (edit: or lifetime license) PDF editor for business use / non-technical people? Whenever we try anything else we inevitably run into something we need acrobat for.

Not sure why would anyone edit a pdf. To me this is a format you export to, not a draft/working doc format.

Reorder pages. Redact. Need to make a minor change, and don't have the original. Digitally sign a document. Comment on a document. Join several documents together.

There are a bunch of reasons.

Post reply on HN