Thanks for the many comments and answers. I gave Howard Oakley’s site a good read-through last week (knowledgable chap). And the answers, as ever, are perplexing for average users, to say the least!
Howard’s own basic editor/viewer app “Podofyllin” sounds like an interesting option.†
I haven’t tried it yet though, so YMMV. The link below also has the PDF articles he has done for perusal as a simple list:
So I’m experimenting with PDFKit in another free tool, Podofyllin. To save you reaching for Wikipedia, podophyllin is a pretty toxic resin which is extracted from the roots of the mandrake plant (a favourite in alchemy and witchcraft) and is sometimes used to remove warts. It also happens to contain the letters P, D and F in order. [source]
Quick summation…
So it seems there is basically no clear answer here on best app usage. I suppose things are open to constant change with each app update, contributing to making such hard-and-fast determinations difficult anyway, along with each user’s individual needs & usage.
The things I’ve heard here and elsewhere seem to be:
Forms: use Acrobat Reader (or Pro, if you have it).
Reader is free at least, and is likely to give the best results when sharing with third parties; they’re most likely to receive form additions/edits intact.
Full-featured: Acrobat Pro is likely the only (almost) completely reliable software.
If you can afford the ~$180/yr price, or have it as part of a wider Adobe subscription, then use this as much as possible to avoid most faults. However, still no guarantees remain if any other parties the doc is shared with are using other software, and you’re exchanging said doc back & forth between you.
Basic stuff: use Preview.
Preview is obviously free and included (at least on macOS, if not on iOS), so is OK for basic personal doc use like moving pages around in-doc/between docs, and maybe OK for markups provided they are typically not re-edited again (or at least not often), depending on what markup has been used. More complex stuff is more likely to have problems with, especially on later re-edits.
Full-featured (non-Adobe): Skim, PDF Expert, PDFpen Pro, Nuance, et al.
Other well-known apps can and often do decent jobs of dealing with edits and markup. But given the different ways each app goes about editing depending on the underlying engine (or version of engine, if they’ve also incorporated additional code to improve/fix bugs in their engine of choice!), they simply may or may not prove effective. So it’s open season, with only trial and error being fruitful.
Not exactly a great state of affairs to be in, if you ask me. But this is not exactly unheard of is it. Other so-called open/semi-open formats like .docx et al. often have the same issues don’t they, where the original format owner (eg. Microsoft) still typically has the most reliable enduring authoring & editing tools. So this comes as no real surprise I guess.
@Pavlis - Well spotted!
In fact they have many apps that come-up in results when searching “PDF” here:
EDIT 1: Is the name “PDFpen” being replaced with “Nitro PDF”, now Nitro own them?
At websites: https://pdfpen.com & https://www.gonitro.com & Mac App Store (essentials / pro):
The only products available for sale for Mac usage are PDF Pro Essentials 13 aka Nitro PDF Pro Essentials ($130) and PDF Pro 13 aka Nitro PDF Pro ($180, while Windows users get it for 20% off at only $144! ).
At Setapp:
The two available are branded still as PDFpen (essentials), but the new name Nitro PDF Pro (pro).
It’s weird the PDFpen name remains only on Setapp, but just for the standard Essentials version. Maybe it’s a brand recognition thing or something.
(also, the website’s $130/180 prices also seem to be higher than I remember, but I could be wrong.)
Setapp looks more & more effective in pricing terms, given these are just two apps of 230+ available!
EDIT 2: the iOS app store also has a iPhone+iPad version of Nitro PDF Pro for $10.
The one problem is that the interface is close to unusable (for me at least). I used to always have a copy of Reader installed, but it got so clunky I removed it. Then a couple of years ago I installed it again to deal with a form and struggled to use it at all. Deleted it and filled out the form on the web instead. It would take an extreme circumstance for me to try Reader again after my last experience. Such a shame Adobe has ruined it.
I use Preview markup extensively (in Catalina). I’m definitely going to try your tip!
One thing that I have noticed is, especially where multiple pages are involved, markups and even simple highlighting can just disappear. So I’ve gotten in the habit of re-PDFing after I finish marking up each page which essentially flattens it. Then the changes don’t go away. I’m also pretty sure that will make it more reliably readable on other systems, whereas a simple marked up page without re-PDFing might display unreliably on a Windows system.
In preview, I take my edited PDF, issue a print command, and instead of printing I save it as a PDF. I almost never use the “file/export as PDF” command.
A marked-up PDF has layers—the base original layer, and then your additions like text fields, squares, circles, arrows, etc. You’ll notice that after re-PDFing this items are no longer editable anymore – hence flattening, it’s all one layer, smooshed together. Hence the mark up items are not prone to vanishing unexpectedly.
Re: Option-selecting of OCR’ed pdf in Preview
Option-selecting in Preview usually works but the result depends on the pdf. If you have an OCR’ed text you can Option-select a block of text but the rows may be garbled. Happens to me all the time. Not sure if that’s an OCR problem or a Preview problem.
Wow. You are right. TextSniper is super cool. So glad you and Peter suggested it. Just got it from the Apple Store and it is now one of my favorite go to apps for so many. things.! Thank you both.
I recently worked at a small company that had a blanket license for Nitro because the then-owner demanded that we use that and not Adobe. Everybody else in the company hated it. I have such a strong feeling about the company, its lack of support, and its product that I will discontinue my use of PDFpen Pro. (I was a long time user.) Unless I can find something good I will probably return my household to Adobe Acrobat Pro (was a long time user of that too from version 3 to about 9).
I will be looking carefully through this thread for other recommendations.
What was it about Nitro/PDFpen that you didn’t like?
Acrobat Pro (Pro being the version Mac users have to get as Standard isn’t available on Mac) is still quite expensive each year at $180(!) for a single users license. So unless one uses it heavily, it’s quite an expense. Hence the issues raised in the whole thread and alternatives.
Apple’s Preview software does what 97% of their users need. It can open most PDFs, allow you to mark them up, and even fill some of them out. It is based upon the ISO 32000-2:2020 standard.
Unfortunately, Adobe keeps enhancing their own PDFs that don’t quite follow that standard. Most companies and software use Adobe’s APIs and software to create their PDF files. Something Apple doesn’t want to do.
I just use Preview and the built in OS stuff. I can generate PDFs, mock them up, convert them to JGPs when needed, etc. I don’t do a lot of stuff with them. If I need people to fill out forms and gather information, I use web based solutions like Google Forms, MailChimp, or SquareSpace Forms.
However, my big issue is iOS and iPadOS. The PDF is built into the OS itself. But, there’s no easy way to convert a PDF to JPG or straight obvious way to save a printout as a PDF. There are times I have to return to my Mac to handle PDF issues.
That’s where I really think Apple falls down: No Preview app for iOS or iPadOS.
Well, share to print. This shows a print preview along with print controls. Unpinch (spread?) the preview and that opens the preview as a PDF (multi-page if there are more than one) and allows you to share that. Maybe it’s not obvious, but, again (like that tapping of items in settings / general / about from a couple of days ago), this is one of those things that I thought was general well-known.
But do Apple follow that standard, or perhaps it’s just buggy as hell? That’s the issue; many things you edit do not stay edited correctly when you try to re-edit them after the file is closed and reopened (e.g. formatting changes when clicked on after re-opening), and lots of other weird behaviours. Hence the topic of this thread.
Do they, where did you read that? AFAIUI, most PDF sw companies use their own engines (or bought in engines) then add code to ‘fix’ things, rather than getting anything from Adobe? So Adobe’s sw itself that’s essentially deemed the canonical standard, hence if affordable, many remain using in industry.
Agree. If Apple think iOS/iPadOS are on-par with macOS, they should have Preview and TextEdit apps for them…and iPad Calculator, of course, lol! (though P-calc is better anyway! ;-)
I know about saving a PDF when you print. It’s just completely inobvious. Heck, I didn’t couldn’t figure out how
To do it until I googled it. Why not have a Print to PDF option like you do on MacOS or a PDF share pane?
You can also easily make a shortcut to covert a PDF into a JPG, but again it’s far from obvious and requires the user to create a shortcut.
If the OS has the capabilities, put it out in the forefront. If my wife wants to do something on her phone, can she figure it out how to do that? That’s my standard.
Hmm, macOS Version 11.6.7, i.e. the PDF function of BigSur generates a PDF file with PDF 1.4 (use Preview’s Tools/Show Inspector to see this.)
PDF 1.4 dates back to 2001.
Adobe released PDF 1.7 as an open standard in 2008, it became ISO 32000-1.
It looks as if Apple doesn’t use the ISO PDF version in Preview at all.
My understanding from talking to a friend at Adobe (but some time ago, so I might be misremembering) who knows more about PDF than anyone on the planet is that PDF truly is a standard, but there are lots of implementations of various versions of the standard, many of which don’t do a good job. Apple’s implementation falls into that category. And interoperating between multiple mediocre implementations can cause headaches.
Adobe Acrobat is probably the closest you can get to a reference implementation. I’m not fond of the app, but it’s the best bet for any tricky PDFs.
Like any standard that has evolved over time, there are multiple versions of the standard. The first Adobe version (1.0) was released in 1993. The latest Adobe version (1.7 Extension level 8) was released in 2011. The latest ISO standard (2.0) was released in 2020.
As such, “the standard” has many optional features, because the feature set has changed over the 27 years that the standard has been in use.
PDF creation software should (one would hope) comply to the letter of a particular revision of the standard (ideally, the latest version at the time it was developed) and not cherry-pick features from multiple revisions, but given human nature, i don’t think it would ever be safe to assume that all products follow this rule.
PDF viewer software must be more robust. It needs to (ideally) support every version of the standard from 1.0 up to the latest version at the time it was developed, in order to be able to display legacy documents. Furthermore, it should include support for all kinds of less-commonly-used features (e.g. support for every standardized raster image format and vector graphic primitive), because it can not make assumptions about what operations the document’s creation software used.
This can be a real problem because developers may spend a lot of time implementing seldom-used features. This will be a significant cost to develop and test the feature, for a small end-user benefit. But those users who have documents using those features will require support, even though most of the world won’t care.
Document editors become even more complicated. Ideally, you’d like to save the file using the same PDF features that the original document used, but what about the changes made to it? Do you implement your new-content to the same standard (knowing that you may end up with multiple object-creation functions for each kind of object your editor can add), or do you add your new content using only one version of the standard (which may result in issues if there are conflicts between the two standards). Or do you convert the entire document to the latest supported version of the standard and potentially alter its appearance? There are no good answers here - just a variety of problematic ones that a developer much choose from.
).
(though P-calc is better anyway! ;-)