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I can't stand when I have to deal with a PDF on Windows on my office computer where I have the free copy of Acrobat. You can right click on a page and it's got

I can't stand when I have to deal with a PDF on Windows on my office computer where I have the free copy of Acrobat. You can right click on a page and it's got "rotate" buttons up at the top. But when you click on one, it takes a second to think about it and then opens a popup to offer you a free 7-day trial of the Pro version. Rotating a page is too powerful a feature for Adobe to not try and sell it to you. https://imgur.com/a/oAYOoqG https://imgur.com/a/oAYOoqG What you can do is "Rotate View Clockwise" three times, way down at the bottom of the menu. It applies to the entire document instead of a single page, and it doesn't persist next time you open the file. Works in a pinch but it's deliberately shitty. Microsoft even had their own PDF viewing software with Windows 8, but instead of improving it to get their user experience one step closer to Apple's, they killed it off to make more people launch Edge by accident. I can only assume there's a KPI somewhere in Microsoft HQ tracking how many times Edge is launched, and making that graph go up and to the right has become their number one corporate priority. It would explain the taskbar's search screen, the "news and weather" bullshit, pressing F1 in Explorer opening a Bing search for "How to get help in Windows" instead of just giving you help, and most every other design choice they've made in the last couple of years.

abawany 4y ago
I recommend trying SumatraPDF - it also supports epub.
samstave 4y ago
What I hate about software like PDF viewers is that they are akin to: Here I printed your manuscript, but in order to read it, you need to pay me for these special glasses to see the ink. Oh you want a change? Pay me for these special gloves so you may handle the pages and reorganize them as you like.
- wlesieutre 4y ago
  Agreed, on a Mac I feel like a PDF document is a stack of paper that I can rearrange, copy, rotate, and otherwise handle however I want to. On Windows it's more like a hardcover bound book that I can download and attach to an email to share with someone, but god forbid I want to change anything. They can make me use Windows in the office, but next time something dies in my home PC I'm just going to sell the rest of it for parts and replace it with a Steam Deck.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    I sometimes wonder if Preview being so much easier than Acrobat isn't an intentional poke at Adobe for all the times Adobe strayed from the one true path of Apple. That whole skipping a version of software release because Adobe didn't pay attention to words from up on high to quite using deprecated language surely didn't sit well.
    - samstave 4y ago
      - dylan604 4y ago
        I've tried on multiple attempts now to decipher WTF this means. Essentially, Adobe === BAD in your opinion, is that it?
    - OnlyMortal 4y ago
      It originated on NeXTStep which used Display Postscript. The graphics primitives still apply to macOS.
      - samstave 4y ago
        samstave 4y ago
        [flagged]
layer8 4y ago
You can use the Adobe Reader Classic Track, which is still on the feature level of 2020 and allows counterclockwise rotation: https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/ReleaseNotesDC/classic/dcclassic2020base.html https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/ReleaseNo...
- wlesieutre 4y ago
  Unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case. All I have is "rotate clockwise" and it's just like Reader DC in that it rotates the view of the entire document rather than actually rotating a page. It's missing the rotation arrow buttons that bug you to buy a subscription, so that's a bit nicer than the current Reader DC release. I assume this is just because it lags behind the main release and they'll be rolled in as a future update on the Classic track?
  - layer8 4y ago
    View > Show/Hide > Toolbar Items > Show Page Display Tools > Counterclockwise
    - wlesieutre 4y ago
      Yes, that rotates your view of every page in the document. It can't rotate a page independently and even if you wanted to rotate every page you can't save the change back to the PDF file because it's functionally "rotate view" even though they hadn't renamed it that yet in 2020. Appreciate the attempt to help, but Acrobat Reader is just shitty. I know it's a deliberate choice to be useless in pursuit of selling more subscriptions, but it's hard to cut them a lot of slack for having a worse free PDF tool than what Apple was shipping for free on all their computers more than 20 years ago.
      - layer8 4y ago
        Well, Adobe Reader is a viewer, not an editor (that’s Adobe Acrobat). For light editing like rotating pages I’d recommend the free version of PDF-XChange Editor: https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor (Persistent rotation is on the “Organize” tab.) It’s easy for Apple because they don’t sell a competing product. Adobe has to balance providing a useful free viewer against a paid editor (or payed extra functions). There’s certainly a lot I’d like to see improved/included in Adobe Reader, but I also recognize that they are in a different market position than Apple.
GraphenePants 4y ago
Correct, you get what you pay for. Acrobat Pro supports advanced rotations for only $14.99 per month. https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/pricing.html https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/pricing.html
- eadmund 4y ago
  > Acrobat Pro supports advanced rotations for only $14.99 per month. That right there is a peak-2022 quote, alright!
- tbrock 4y ago
  Why doesn’t Microsoft take the hint and make a decent pdf viewer / editor thingy? They seemed to get the hint on the terminal finally… Handle basic viewing, editing, signatures. Etc… While we are at it a GTK one would be great in Gnome too…
  - derefr 4y ago
    As Balmer put it: developers, developers, developers. In other words: the purpose of (consumer) Windows isn't to make money for Microsoft; the purpose of (consumer) Windows is to create a sales channel — "Windows users" — for Windows developers like Adobe to sell their Windows software products into. Microsoft then makes their money off those very same Windows developers, through corporate Windows licensing, Office subscriptions, Azure, etc. As such, Microsoft tries as much as possible to avoid "bringing in" any features that are currently being sold as products by companies in their developer ecosystem (which would deprive those developers of revenue, and thus deprive them of revenue.) Acrobat charges to rotate images? Better not offer native image rotation.
    - archduck 4y ago
      This is the impression I have from Wordpress as well. Some of the most basic features you would expect a blogging platform or a brochure site creator to have out of the box are conspicuously missing, and I strongly suspect the reason for their absence is NOT for the sake of keeping the base WP install small, but rather because there are paid plugins in the Wordpress Plugin Directory which fulfill those basic functions, thereby providing a marketplace to incentivize WP development, regardless of how basic the functionality that you're looking for is. There is indeed a vibrant WP marketplace as a consequence of this, but should I really have to install a 3rd party library to get simple modal windows? Regardless of how much popups suck, they're something that every commercial client asks for at some point, and instead of having a single way of doing it which is official, well-maintained, and trustworthy, you have to shop around and try out every mystery devshop's kneecapped freemium version, many of which pelt you with banner ads and/or conflict with another shitty-ass plugin! It's very much a developer-centric way of doing things. Fine, that's a worthy cause, especially since Wordpress is free; but more often than not, the best solution is to invest in one of the plugin "suites" which do more than one thing without interfering with other things. As much as I like composition and "do one thing and do it well," if you try to go down that path with Wordpress plugins, you're asking for it.
timeon 4y ago
Comparing to Preview, just opening Acrobat is pain.
asiachick 4y ago
I think preview on MacOS is great but when I'm on windows (and 95% of the time I'm on Mac) I open PDFs in Chrome (Firefox would probably work as well). Both have a built in sandboxed reader. In fact pretty much the only time I open a PDF in preview is to merge 1 or more PDFs (show the thumbnails, copy and paste them from one to the other). Otherwise I never use Preview for PDFs and I reference tons of PDF based specs. On the other hand I use Preview to quickly crop or markup screenshots all the time.

abawany 4y ago

I recommend trying SumatraPDF - it also supports epub.

samstave 4y ago

What I hate about software like PDF viewers is that they are akin to: Here I printed your manuscript, but in order to read it, you need to pay me for these special glasses to see the ink. Oh you want a change? Pay me for these special gloves so you may handle the pages and reorganize them as you like.

wlesieutre 4y ago
Agreed, on a Mac I feel like a PDF document is a stack of paper that I can rearrange, copy, rotate, and otherwise handle however I want to. On Windows it's more like a hardcover bound book that I can download and attach to an email to share with someone, but god forbid I want to change anything. They can make me use Windows in the office, but next time something dies in my home PC I'm just going to sell the rest of it for parts and replace it with a Steam Deck.
- dylan604 4y ago
  I sometimes wonder if Preview being so much easier than Acrobat isn't an intentional poke at Adobe for all the times Adobe strayed from the one true path of Apple. That whole skipping a version of software release because Adobe didn't pay attention to words from up on high to quite using deprecated language surely didn't sit well.
  - samstave 4y ago
    - dylan604 4y ago
      I've tried on multiple attempts now to decipher WTF this means. Essentially, Adobe === BAD in your opinion, is that it?
  - OnlyMortal 4y ago
    It originated on NeXTStep which used Display Postscript. The graphics primitives still apply to macOS.
    - samstave 4y ago
      - samstave 4y ago
        [flagged]

layer8 4y ago

You can use the Adobe Reader Classic Track, which is still on the feature level of 2020 and allows counterclockwise rotation: https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/ReleaseNotesDC/classic/dcclassic2020base.html https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/ReleaseNo...

wlesieutre 4y ago
Unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case. All I have is "rotate clockwise" and it's just like Reader DC in that it rotates the view of the entire document rather than actually rotating a page. It's missing the rotation arrow buttons that bug you to buy a subscription, so that's a bit nicer than the current Reader DC release. I assume this is just because it lags behind the main release and they'll be rolled in as a future update on the Classic track?
- layer8 4y ago
  View > Show/Hide > Toolbar Items > Show Page Display Tools > Counterclockwise
  - wlesieutre 4y ago
    Yes, that rotates your view of every page in the document. It can't rotate a page independently and even if you wanted to rotate every page you can't save the change back to the PDF file because it's functionally "rotate view" even though they hadn't renamed it that yet in 2020. Appreciate the attempt to help, but Acrobat Reader is just shitty. I know it's a deliberate choice to be useless in pursuit of selling more subscriptions, but it's hard to cut them a lot of slack for having a worse free PDF tool than what Apple was shipping for free on all their computers more than 20 years ago.
    - layer8 4y ago
      Well, Adobe Reader is a viewer, not an editor (that’s Adobe Acrobat). For light editing like rotating pages I’d recommend the free version of PDF-XChange Editor: https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor (Persistent rotation is on the “Organize” tab.) It’s easy for Apple because they don’t sell a competing product. Adobe has to balance providing a useful free viewer against a paid editor (or payed extra functions). There’s certainly a lot I’d like to see improved/included in Adobe Reader, but I also recognize that they are in a different market position than Apple.

GraphenePants 4y ago

Correct, you get what you pay for. Acrobat Pro supports advanced rotations for only $14.99 per month. https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/pricing.html https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/pricing.html

eadmund 4y ago
> Acrobat Pro supports advanced rotations for only $14.99 per month. That right there is a peak-2022 quote, alright!
tbrock 4y ago
Why doesn’t Microsoft take the hint and make a decent pdf viewer / editor thingy? They seemed to get the hint on the terminal finally… Handle basic viewing, editing, signatures. Etc… While we are at it a GTK one would be great in Gnome too…
- derefr 4y ago
  As Balmer put it: developers, developers, developers. In other words: the purpose of (consumer) Windows isn't to make money for Microsoft; the purpose of (consumer) Windows is to create a sales channel — "Windows users" — for Windows developers like Adobe to sell their Windows software products into. Microsoft then makes their money off those very same Windows developers, through corporate Windows licensing, Office subscriptions, Azure, etc. As such, Microsoft tries as much as possible to avoid "bringing in" any features that are currently being sold as products by companies in their developer ecosystem (which would deprive those developers of revenue, and thus deprive them of revenue.) Acrobat charges to rotate images? Better not offer native image rotation.
  - archduck 4y ago
    This is the impression I have from Wordpress as well. Some of the most basic features you would expect a blogging platform or a brochure site creator to have out of the box are conspicuously missing, and I strongly suspect the reason for their absence is NOT for the sake of keeping the base WP install small, but rather because there are paid plugins in the Wordpress Plugin Directory which fulfill those basic functions, thereby providing a marketplace to incentivize WP development, regardless of how basic the functionality that you're looking for is. There is indeed a vibrant WP marketplace as a consequence of this, but should I really have to install a 3rd party library to get simple modal windows? Regardless of how much popups suck, they're something that every commercial client asks for at some point, and instead of having a single way of doing it which is official, well-maintained, and trustworthy, you have to shop around and try out every mystery devshop's kneecapped freemium version, many of which pelt you with banner ads and/or conflict with another shitty-ass plugin! It's very much a developer-centric way of doing things. Fine, that's a worthy cause, especially since Wordpress is free; but more often than not, the best solution is to invest in one of the plugin "suites" which do more than one thing without interfering with other things. As much as I like composition and "do one thing and do it well," if you try to go down that path with Wordpress plugins, you're asking for it.

timeon 4y ago

Comparing to Preview, just opening Acrobat is pain.

asiachick 4y ago

I think preview on MacOS is great but when I'm on windows (and 95% of the time I'm on Mac) I open PDFs in Chrome (Firefox would probably work as well). Both have a built in sandboxed reader. In fact pretty much the only time I open a PDF in preview is to merge 1 or more PDFs (show the thumbnails, copy and paste them from one to the other). Otherwise I never use Preview for PDFs and I reference tons of PDF based specs. On the other hand I use Preview to quickly crop or markup screenshots all the time.