PDF Alternatives

David,
I don’t know all that Preview does, so it may do some of the things that I do with PDF Expert. The three big things I use PDF Expert for are: 1) fill in forms/ add text to a PDF; 2) moving text around (cutting & pasting); 3) Highlighting text. There are other things but those are my primary things with PDF Expert. For most everything else I use Preview. I hope this answers your question.

Steve

Preview can do (1) and (3); it can not do (2).

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Here is an online PDF editor https://smallpdf.com/edit-pdf that works very similar to Preview. Basic editing functions are free.

As far as I can see from looking at their web site (I’m not a user), PDF Expert can’t create fillable forms. Is that correct?

One more suggestion, necessary if you need to create or edit pdf forms as I sometimes do. Check out Wondershare PDFelement; they offer an annual subscription or perpetual license, along with the other usual functions.

I’ve used PDFPen for years, but have been looking at MasterPDF lately. It works on all the main platforms (win/mac/linux) - Master PDF Editor | Edit text and images in PDF files

Thank you to everyone for your replies; this has been extremely helpful. I’ve tested PDF Expert and Apple Preview & had great success w/both. Turns out every problem I had while using PDF Pen was caused by PDF Pen. I had assumed the issues were caused by new versions of Mac OS or increased security measures by financial websites & that Nitro (PDF Pen) hadn’t been updated to account for these changes. I was wrong and I’m angry about the amount of time I’ve spent trying to work w/Nitro. Nitro still won’t admit any responsibility for these problems, still claims there are website security issues that it can’t work around. Yet somehow these same issues aren’t a problem when using PDF Expert or Preview and I doubt those companies (Readdle & Apple) are doing anything subversive to get around the so-called security issues.

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one more very happy PDF Expert user. I found a website with tabular data that I was hoping to capture. I told Safari to Print and saved it as a PDF. I opened the PDF with PDF Expert. Then I used File:Export to save it as a spreadsheet. I was amazed, it did so and opened it in Excel.

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There is a 50%-Off sale on the lifetime license for PDF Expert at Macworld:

I saw the 50% lifetime discount but decided it wasn’t worth it for me. That plan does not include iPhone, iPad, & Mac versions, the yearly plan includes all 3. Also the yearly plan includes All future updates, the lifetime discount only includes Limited future updates. It was sort of a potayto potato situation. I’m not a super heavy user of PDF docs, need something as simple as possible. I’ve tested it over the last few weeks and despite the fact that the main office is burdened by being located in Ukraine, the response to support questions has been phenomenal. One question was answered via email in less that 5 minutes. Unless something changes, I’m throwing my support behind PDF Expert Annual Plan.:+1:t2::raised_hands:t2:

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Does anyone have any experience with Master PDF Editor?

https://code-industry.net/masterpdfeditor/

Angeloweb mentioned it and I agree that a single solution for Mac/Linux/PC would be ideal.

Does anyone have any experiences with it to share?

Check out Ulysses! (I just wrote a small review to the TidBits notice about a new upgrade. Excellent MARKUP language editor and from their output is massive, including PDF’s with style sheets!

Does Preview still handle PDFs very differently to the Adobe spec, or have they improved it in the last few macOS versions?

PDF is a big ball of hurt, with standards being flummoxed by various engines over the years. Meaning you can edit a PDF in one app, but then have the whole thing ruined when re-editing it slightly in another.

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I would be very surprised if anything significant had changed in Preview in the last few years.

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Yes, that’s my guess too. Although I think they’ve done some minor interface changes over the last few releases (say, from Mojave onwards). So maybe some small things might have been done under the hood as well – though who would know, as Apple don’t tend to advertise changes in these non-headline new feature type updates.

I’m still a little bit surprised at how little Apple seem to care about Preview PDF editing functionality with regards to interoperability with other PDF apps. As Preview edits often do not play well when re-editing later in Preview itself, never mind in other PDF editing apps.

Given just how ubiquitous the format is in global computing use, where editing is concerned, it’s a shame PDF can be so unreliable a format to work with.

Apple has let their PDFKit rot for the most part. Adding a few bells and whistles here and there recently does not make up for the fact that they are using a very old PDF standard. Try using Preview to fill out basic form PDFs to share with colleagues (or even move between two of you own computers) and you will soon discover corruption, missing data, etc.

While some of this may be due to what Howard Oakley discusses, there is simply no excuse for Apple allowing PDF corruption to persist on their own platform for so many years, inflicting chaos and damage upon so many in business, education and personal environments.

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Interesting, I have a completely different reaction to Oakley’s article. It’s a shame that the open source PDF world hasn’t been a better steward, but I don’t see that it’s Apple’s responsibility to fix a messy problem that they don’t own.

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I use Preview for most of my work with PDF documents, however Preview and PDF Expert are not able to create fillable forms. Therefore my choices were Adobe Acrobat or Nitro PDF Pro. I chose the Nitro product since I was using the older version successfully in the past. Adobe lost me as a customer when they moved to the subscription model. Yes Nitro PDF Pro has some rough edges but I have been able to create the forms I needed with it. Preview has changed in various revisions of the macOS, and it’s most notable in editing PDF form fields.

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I agree to a point, Gordon. However it seems troubling that Apple cannot make basic PDF forms work on their own platform. The whole point of PDF was a format that could be passed between users independent of their system.

However, the forms issue is not limited to files being passed between Windows and macOS or even via email. I mean macOS to macOS, same version, transferred via USB stick in the same room. The destination system will have blank form fields.

Having witnessed this issue repeatedly at educational institutions, offices, etc. it seems troubling that Apple would simply leave something that broken and think it is acceptable. If the edits were ever only intended by Apple to be on the source computer, where is the UI messaging to the user? Where is the assistance to explain how to export a PDF in a manner that is usable by another computer/user? There is not the slightest hint of a warning when working with PDFs in Preview or Pages.

Unless something changed recently that I am unaware of, Apple software saves PDFs in the v1.3 standard that came with Acrobat 4.0 in April 1999. Some institutions now require at least v1.4 for any PDF documents (which was available in May 2001 with Acrobat 5.0). Does Apple not have the development resources to even meet the 2001 standard? This essentially means PDF on the Mac right now is the same as when Mac OS X was first launched at the turn of the century.

Additionally, some of Apple’s changes to the PDFKit in recent years broke things for many smaller app developers to the point that their customers’ problems could not be fixed (due to PDFKit dependency) and some have simply given up.

As a bonus link, here is one example of a recurring display issue with PDFKit on macOS:

PDF blurry in any PDFKit apps (Apple Discussions)

I remember when OS X first was introduced, Steve Jobs spent some time talking about how he saw OS X (and Preview.app) as being the best platform for working with PDFs, and that it would be a critical part of the Mac’s future. I do wonder what happened to that view of the world.