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If you’re talking Mac, why on earth would you install Adobe Reader? I’m sure there’s a different set of 5% functionality for power users, but Preview does every

If you’re talking Mac, why on earth would you install Adobe Reader? I’m sure there’s a different set of 5% functionality for power users, but Preview does everything I need (including things like signature annotation, real redaction, joining multiple PDFs together) and it does it quickly and with everything enabled for free.

diggan 1y ago
> joining multiple PDFs together What about joining page 2-3 from PDF A with page 7-23 from PDF B? I remember that being a huge hassle on macOS when I was using it years ago. Think I ended up using some cloud service/website for it since the documents weren't confidential at all.
- mynameismon 1y ago
  For those who have an installation of LaTeX: It is pretty easy to use LaTeX for this.
  - diggan 1y ago
    > It is pretty easy to use LaTeX for this. Without looking it up the arguments/syntax, how do I do "join page 2-3 from PDF A with page 7-23 from PDF B"? If it's more than one CLI invocation, easy to remember/find in the shell history and less than 80 characters long, I'm not sure I'd call it easy :)
    - fooofw 1y ago
      pdfjam [1] uses a LaTeX package under the hood, is included with the TeX Live distribution and acts as a wrapper for a LaTeX package. With this, I believe your example would be: pdfjam PDF_A.pdf '2-3' PDF_B.pdf '7-23' --outfile joined.pdf I'll admit that I had to look it up but that only took about 3 minutes (it's an example in the readme). [1] https://github.com/pdfjam/pdfjam https://github.com/pdfjam/pdfjam
- episteme 1y ago
  Can’t you just drag and drop across preview windows?
  - JKCalhoun 1y ago
    You can — just drag the thumbnails. The only downside to this, that I am aware of, is that a new PDF is created (rendered into a new PDF context). That can be lossy in some cases (if there are features that Preview does not support that get "dropped on the floor") and it is possible for the resulting PDF to be larger than the original(s).
  - diggan 1y ago
    Woah, page-by-page? I wasn't aware of that, I guess I'll give it a try the next time I'm in front of a Mac and need to join PDFs again :)
- wonger_ 1y ago
  qpdf is usually my PDF wrangler of choice: qpdf --empty --pages a.pdf 2,3 b.pdf 7-23 -- out.pdf
- jbn 1y ago
  my go-to tool for this is pdftk. See https://www.pdflabs.com/docs/pdftk-cli-examples/ https://www.pdflabs.com/docs/pdftk-cli-examples/
behnamoh 1y ago
You're right, why would anyone use Adobe Reader instead of the built-in Preview on Mac? Though Preview has its own limitations.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  How does Preview suck? The only thing that comes to mind is that it is missing some advanced PDF features that involve JavaScript (which, to some, might be seen as an asset).
  - behnamoh 1y ago
    Ever since 3 years ago, every time I open a PDF in Preview it somehow scales it wrong, so swiping left and right jiggles the PDF... (Not that I swipe left/right intentionally, but that happens when swiping up/down). I alway have to zoom out a bit so the document correctly fits the screen and swiping left/right gets disabled.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    About 1 in 15 of the pdfs I view in Preview have some sort of "corrupt jpeg" artifacting on the first page. (These are scans of old books, magazines, typically.) There will be a diagonal staircase of green blocks, each what I assume is the DCT 8x8 size going all the way down the page, along with what looks like a missing color channel. The same pdf if opened with Firefox will look fine (so pdfjs gets it right). This has gone on for years, something to do with MacOS's own rendering of pdfs (so trivially switching to another app is unlikely to fix it). I have no idea what this is, I can't even think of a good description with which to google the problem...
    - JKCalhoun 1y ago
      Love to see an example PDF. (I'd like to send it to the PDF/ImageIO team at Apple.)
ilamont 1y ago
I use Preview for signature annotation, joining PDFs, deleting pages, etc. but in some cases it messes up fillable PDFs - fields aren't aligned properly, or certain math functions won't work.
D13Fd 1y ago
Preview is OK and better than Reader. But PDF Expert is excellent in every way, and is a dramatic improvement on both Adobe Acrobat and Preview. It’s so weird that they won’t release a PC version.
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
There are a lot of classic PDF features that are still unimplemented by alternative viewers. For work I have to use Reader for clickable metadata popups that other viewers don't support.
- wildzzz 1y ago
  There are two big features that Adobe supports that I just don't see common in other readers. First, the schematic capture application I use will generate a PDF of a schematic that has metadata of each component accessible by clicking it. The schematic will show "R179, 100ohms, 0.125W" but clicking to see the metadata will show a part number along with whatever other data the BOM has. No other reader I've used will show this data. Since the schematic PDF serves as our "immutable" copy that goes into our CRM system, it's nice that you have everything you need without having to open Cadence. I believe this is some sort of JavaScript extension to PDF that is likely incredibly exploitable so this is likely why no one else seems to support it (and why Adobe always seems subject to CVEs). Second, we use Adobe's comments to markup released drawings or other documents for changes. Then both I and QA put our signatures on the PDF and it's either sent to the factory floor for immediate implementation or sent to the document owner for them to incorporate into a new release. Other readers don't always use comments the same way or don't respect the read only attribute that comments and signatures should have.
vondur 1y ago
I've seen that many forms just don't work properly in Preview. I'm not sure if it's due to custom stuff that only Acrobat does or just features that Apple doesn't want to include in preview. But I can always tell with some forms that they've been filled out in Preview on Mac due to how they mangle it.
nottorp 1y ago
Not for power users, for governments :) I keep the official adobe reader around because it's the only way i can sign some crap for the gov. It's like a virus, I had to remove update daemons and spam daemons and stuff by hand. Btw the article says it has "AI" now. Where will it send my tax forms?
insane_dreamer 1y ago
Love Preview but it doesn’t work with all PDFs. I still have to switch to Acrobat regularly.
staticman2 1y ago
Sometimes Mac users need to communicate with Non Mac users and it's helpful to be using the same PDF reader software so you know what you send them is the same as what they'll see.

diggan 1y ago

> joining multiple PDFs together What about joining page 2-3 from PDF A with page 7-23 from PDF B? I remember that being a huge hassle on macOS when I was using it years ago. Think I ended up using some cloud service/website for it since the documents weren't confidential at all.

mynameismon 1y ago
For those who have an installation of LaTeX: It is pretty easy to use LaTeX for this.
- diggan 1y ago
  > It is pretty easy to use LaTeX for this. Without looking it up the arguments/syntax, how do I do "join page 2-3 from PDF A with page 7-23 from PDF B"? If it's more than one CLI invocation, easy to remember/find in the shell history and less than 80 characters long, I'm not sure I'd call it easy :)
  - fooofw 1y ago
    pdfjam [1] uses a LaTeX package under the hood, is included with the TeX Live distribution and acts as a wrapper for a LaTeX package. With this, I believe your example would be: pdfjam PDF_A.pdf '2-3' PDF_B.pdf '7-23' --outfile joined.pdf I'll admit that I had to look it up but that only took about 3 minutes (it's an example in the readme). [1] https://github.com/pdfjam/pdfjam https://github.com/pdfjam/pdfjam
episteme 1y ago
Can’t you just drag and drop across preview windows?
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  You can — just drag the thumbnails. The only downside to this, that I am aware of, is that a new PDF is created (rendered into a new PDF context). That can be lossy in some cases (if there are features that Preview does not support that get "dropped on the floor") and it is possible for the resulting PDF to be larger than the original(s).
- diggan 1y ago
  Woah, page-by-page? I wasn't aware of that, I guess I'll give it a try the next time I'm in front of a Mac and need to join PDFs again :)
wonger_ 1y ago
qpdf is usually my PDF wrangler of choice: qpdf --empty --pages a.pdf 2,3 b.pdf 7-23 -- out.pdf
jbn 1y ago
my go-to tool for this is pdftk. See https://www.pdflabs.com/docs/pdftk-cli-examples/ https://www.pdflabs.com/docs/pdftk-cli-examples/

behnamoh 1y ago

You're right, why would anyone use Adobe Reader instead of the built-in Preview on Mac? Though Preview has its own limitations.

JKCalhoun 1y ago
How does Preview suck? The only thing that comes to mind is that it is missing some advanced PDF features that involve JavaScript (which, to some, might be seen as an asset).
- behnamoh 1y ago
  Ever since 3 years ago, every time I open a PDF in Preview it somehow scales it wrong, so swiping left and right jiggles the PDF... (Not that I swipe left/right intentionally, but that happens when swiping up/down). I alway have to zoom out a bit so the document correctly fits the screen and swiping left/right gets disabled.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  About 1 in 15 of the pdfs I view in Preview have some sort of "corrupt jpeg" artifacting on the first page. (These are scans of old books, magazines, typically.) There will be a diagonal staircase of green blocks, each what I assume is the DCT 8x8 size going all the way down the page, along with what looks like a missing color channel. The same pdf if opened with Firefox will look fine (so pdfjs gets it right). This has gone on for years, something to do with MacOS's own rendering of pdfs (so trivially switching to another app is unlikely to fix it). I have no idea what this is, I can't even think of a good description with which to google the problem...
  - JKCalhoun 1y ago
    Love to see an example PDF. (I'd like to send it to the PDF/ImageIO team at Apple.)

ilamont 1y ago

I use Preview for signature annotation, joining PDFs, deleting pages, etc. but in some cases it messes up fillable PDFs - fields aren't aligned properly, or certain math functions won't work.

D13Fd 1y ago

Preview is OK and better than Reader. But PDF Expert is excellent in every way, and is a dramatic improvement on both Adobe Acrobat and Preview. It’s so weird that they won’t release a PC version.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

There are a lot of classic PDF features that are still unimplemented by alternative viewers. For work I have to use Reader for clickable metadata popups that other viewers don't support.

wildzzz 1y ago
There are two big features that Adobe supports that I just don't see common in other readers. First, the schematic capture application I use will generate a PDF of a schematic that has metadata of each component accessible by clicking it. The schematic will show "R179, 100ohms, 0.125W" but clicking to see the metadata will show a part number along with whatever other data the BOM has. No other reader I've used will show this data. Since the schematic PDF serves as our "immutable" copy that goes into our CRM system, it's nice that you have everything you need without having to open Cadence. I believe this is some sort of JavaScript extension to PDF that is likely incredibly exploitable so this is likely why no one else seems to support it (and why Adobe always seems subject to CVEs). Second, we use Adobe's comments to markup released drawings or other documents for changes. Then both I and QA put our signatures on the PDF and it's either sent to the factory floor for immediate implementation or sent to the document owner for them to incorporate into a new release. Other readers don't always use comments the same way or don't respect the read only attribute that comments and signatures should have.

vondur 1y ago

I've seen that many forms just don't work properly in Preview. I'm not sure if it's due to custom stuff that only Acrobat does or just features that Apple doesn't want to include in preview. But I can always tell with some forms that they've been filled out in Preview on Mac due to how they mangle it.

nottorp 1y ago

Not for power users, for governments :) I keep the official adobe reader around because it's the only way i can sign some crap for the gov. It's like a virus, I had to remove update daemons and spam daemons and stuff by hand. Btw the article says it has "AI" now. Where will it send my tax forms?

insane_dreamer 1y ago

Love Preview but it doesn’t work with all PDFs. I still have to switch to Acrobat regularly.

staticman2 1y ago

Sometimes Mac users need to communicate with Non Mac users and it's helpful to be using the same PDF reader software so you know what you send them is the same as what they'll see.