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Genuine question; what does Acrobat Pro buy you over the free versions and/or OSS competitors? I uses Apple Preview a lot because it lets me edit and sign docu

Genuine question; what does Acrobat Pro buy you over the free versions and/or OSS competitors? I uses Apple Preview a lot because it lets me edit and sign documents pretty easily, and that came bundled with my Mac. What does the Acrobat Pro include that isn't in the free stuff?

hedora 2y ago
I’ve been wondering about this too. In addition to signing documents with Preview, MacOS/Linux/Windows can all print to pdf / pdf/a, and the Notes app on iOS includes a camera-based document scanner that exports to OCR’ed PDF. I’ve been making PDFs with LaTeX, for decades, but those other tools are more mainstream, and work fine. I can’t imagine why anyone would pay for acrobat these days.
anigbrowl 2y ago
One huge flaw of Apple Preview is that it doesn't handle PDF forms well, as I discovered when trying to print tax returns.
- tombert 2y ago
  Really? Me and my wife did her immigration paperwork a few years ago with Apple Preview (I think?) to edit the forms. I'd be curious to hear what Preview messed up?
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    It looked fine on screen, but only printed the first 4-5 pages properly, then lots of stuff was missing on subsequent pages. After that I couldn't print at all and ended up having to remove/reinstall the printer in OS preferences. This was just a few months ago, OS up to date, unremarkable Canon printer.
8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
None of the free apps I tried can fill out certain forms. The one built into Firefox is pretty good but still a little janky with some fields.
hnick 2y ago
I think the modern ones are all fine for the basic stuff like that. For my work, it was the highly detailed low level stuff. Pre-flight checks/profiles, content tree (object level, including text fragment) browsing, flattening, converting, transforming versions, and so on. It was indispensable for some of those operations, working in a printing business where clients would sometimes send in their own problematic PDFs which we'd need to adjust or inspect to find the error. (Favourite one: a font was embedded in a PDF that mapped a character using // in its name, which was "fine" on PDF, but on the printer's RIP was converted to postscript for one step, and // in postscript precedes an immediately evaluated name so it stopped parsing and tried to look for it and bombed out)
freitzkriesler2 2y ago
There's advanced features that FOSS equivalents dont do quite as well. I also wish Microsoft would pull its head out of its rear and make a preview clone for windows because that app basically supplants acrobat for basic use.

hedora 2y ago

I’ve been wondering about this too. In addition to signing documents with Preview, MacOS/Linux/Windows can all print to pdf / pdf/a, and the Notes app on iOS includes a camera-based document scanner that exports to OCR’ed PDF. I’ve been making PDFs with LaTeX, for decades, but those other tools are more mainstream, and work fine. I can’t imagine why anyone would pay for acrobat these days.

anigbrowl 2y ago

One huge flaw of Apple Preview is that it doesn't handle PDF forms well, as I discovered when trying to print tax returns.

tombert 2y ago
Really? Me and my wife did her immigration paperwork a few years ago with Apple Preview (I think?) to edit the forms. I'd be curious to hear what Preview messed up?
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  It looked fine on screen, but only printed the first 4-5 pages properly, then lots of stuff was missing on subsequent pages. After that I couldn't print at all and ended up having to remove/reinstall the printer in OS preferences. This was just a few months ago, OS up to date, unremarkable Canon printer.

8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago

None of the free apps I tried can fill out certain forms. The one built into Firefox is pretty good but still a little janky with some fields.

hnick 2y ago

I think the modern ones are all fine for the basic stuff like that. For my work, it was the highly detailed low level stuff. Pre-flight checks/profiles, content tree (object level, including text fragment) browsing, flattening, converting, transforming versions, and so on. It was indispensable for some of those operations, working in a printing business where clients would sometimes send in their own problematic PDFs which we'd need to adjust or inspect to find the error. (Favourite one: a font was embedded in a PDF that mapped a character using // in its name, which was "fine" on PDF, but on the printer's RIP was converted to postscript for one step, and // in postscript precedes an immediately evaluated name so it stopped parsing and tried to look for it and bombed out)

freitzkriesler2 2y ago

There's advanced features that FOSS equivalents dont do quite as well. I also wish Microsoft would pull its head out of its rear and make a preview clone for windows because that app basically supplants acrobat for basic use.