Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable • Hacker News Board

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#131

Post by dylan604 » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 6:07 AM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #120

makeitdouble wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being baked in or not is a tradeoff. In this case I'd say it would better if it was in, but having a one time download from a trusted source isn't the end of the world either. I'd make the parallel with browsers: there's an argument for them to stay decoupled from the system.

I suspect being an optionally installable tool for power users gives their team more flexibility to make it a good product in an attempt to keep those users on Windows, if it had big user numbers they’d have to turn it into PowerToys 365 Copilot and make it so opening anything with the launcher tool somehow involved a round-trip through Edge and Bing

I'm sorry, but are you saying pressing the space bar is a power user move? Really? MS cannot include it, as that'd be admitting someone else came up with a better move. Having it as an installable option just says, yeah, it's cool, but only for those worthy. WTF? They just as easily could have had it be ctrl+windows+spacebar, and then it would be just a natural windows user shortcut. Maybe throw in +alt so that it's just smash all four bottom buttons in an angry move. even Apple didn't require it to be OpenApple+spacebar or ClosedApple+spacebar. It's just spacebar right out of the box. No secondary installs or buttons required.

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#132

Post by vincent-uden » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 6:12 AM UTC

m463 wrote: post #122

Is there any open way to: - make fillable forms - fill out a form, and save/load/save it? I recall some fillable forms could be opened and filled out on macos, but then they were sort of "finalized" and couldn't be edited once saved.

Not yet, and maybe not ever.

MuPDF for sure has most of the capabilities of interacting with forms. But for my workflow I mostly create and read pdfs, I don't fill out much information in partially complete PDFs.

Comments or annotations are in the planning stage though

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#133

Post by vincent-uden » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 6:15 AM UTC

octagons wrote: post #55

In my experience, anyone running Wayland is very much used to some number of applications that depend on Xwayland. Does Zathura + MuPDF not work with it? Either way, if you want to show off a project, just do so…

Of course Zathura + any backend works through XWayland. But as mentioned I also use Windows and want to use the same program (or something with the same key bindings) on both operating systems

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#134

Post by vincent-uden » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 6:16 AM UTC

scuff3d wrote: post #116

If Zathura works on X11 wouldn't it work with Xwayland?

Of course Zathura + any backend works through XWayland. But as mentioned I also use Windows and want to use the same program (or something with the same key bindings) on both operating systems

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#135

Post by vincent-uden » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 6:16 AM UTC

mapierce2 wrote: post #50

I'm pretty sure zathura works with wayland just fine.

Of course Zathura + any backend works through XWayland. But as mentioned I also use Windows and want to use the same program (or something with the same key bindings) on both operating systems

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#136

Post by scuff3d » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 6:24 AM UTC

vincent-uden wrote: post #134

scuff3d wrote: post #116

If Zathura works on X11 wouldn't it work with Xwayland?

Of course Zathura + any backend works through XWayland. But as mentioned I also use Windows and want to use the same program (or something with the same key bindings) on both operating systems

Ah, missed that bit.

This seems pretty far to go to do it but I think you could probably get it working on Windows through WSL2.

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#137

Post by sings » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 6:32 AM UTC

OGEnthusiast wrote: post #21

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

Preview is genuinely very good, but it doesn’t handle annotations made in Acrobat very well. When navigating between annotations, they can become stuck open in Preview, and it is not possible to view insertions.

Whether that is the fault of Acrobat or Preview, I’m not sure. Unfortunately, though, it means I frequently need to move across to Acrobat when addressing edits that someone has marked up in that software. And that acts as a constant reminder of how sluggish, awkward and nagging Acrobat can be. Even quitting the app is slow!

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#138

Post by tombert » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 6:52 AM UTC

vincent-uden wrote: post #129

tombert wrote: post #40

I haven't really ever had issues with Evince. I don't know that my requirements have that advanced, but it does auto-updates when I write Typst or LaTeX, which is the thing I primarily care about.

From a quick glance it seems to be a GNOME application? So that would rule out Windows support right?

Oh, probably. The post mentioned Wayland which is why I brought it up.

I haven’t run windows in any serious capacity in quite some time.

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#139

Post by gsinclair » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 6:53 AM UTC

sharma-arjun wrote: post #111

funktour wrote: post #82

There are a surprising number of Preview defenders here. You guys must have never had to open a 500+ page document, because for me, that's an all-but guaranteed way to make Preview crash. Preview is only best because the major alternatives (Acrobat) suck more. PDF readers I actually like: Zathura (obviously), sioyek (if you like customizability and Vim-like bindings, this is a good one!), and Skim. Everything else tr…

Skim is amazing, I've never had it crash on large documents or with keyword searches as Preview almost always does. Also has a great note-taking system for scientific / academic work. Not sure why it flies under the radar so much.

I’ve had Skim crash on me several times. I still like it though.

Re: Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

#140

Post by prmoustache » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 7:16 AM UTC

bix6 wrote: post #113

ok123456 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you. I am constantly mind blown by the lack of awareness around PDF use in business on this board (and O365) lol.

Maybe people gere are more picky whom they are doing business with. I mean if I have to sign a contract I'd rather do it with someone who tend to know what they are doing on a general basis.