DON'S FREEWARE CORNER -- MAR 2013
PDF READERS
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DON'S FREEWARE CORNER 2013-03
PDF READERS
©2014 Donald R. Snow
My Freeware Corner Notes are
printed in our Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group monthly
newsletter TAGGology and posted on my Family History Class Notes
webpage http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
, sometimes with updated information there.
PDF READERS
This month we consider two free Windows pdf readers. pdf is
an acronym for Portable Document Format and is a file format that
Adobe developed so that text files would look the same on any
computer and operating system, whether in Windows, Mac, Linux,
etc. It has become a standard that many organizations have
adopted, including the LDS Church, so all the Church manuals,
Conference Reports, magazines, handbooks, etc., are now published
online in pdf format. There are many free pdf readers,
including Adobe Reader. The two we discuss here either work
much faster than Adobe Reader or have additional features.
1. FOXIT READER
Download from http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/
This was recently voted the best free pdf reader by
readers and writers of dotTech, a group of tech people who keep up
on these things -- http://dottech.org/96878/windows-best-free-pdf-reader-program-review/
. It is much smaller than Adobe Reader and so uses less of
your computing power when running. Additional features it
has are finding all pdf's on your hard drive and putting notes on
them. It has a horizontal split screen view so you can
scroll through a pdf while holding one part still, like a
split-screen view in a spreadsheet. It has a search tool
that will search through all the pdf's in folders and subfolders
and show the term highlighted in the pdf when you click on
it. But this only works if the pdf already has the text
layer and I don't think it will OCR (Optical Character
Recognition) those that don't already have it. The
search function even found names on some pdf pedigree fan charts
that I had in the folder. As you click on pdf's containing
the search term it puts them into tabs across the top so you can
go back to whichever one you want later. You can zoom in or
out on a pdf by Control ++ or - - . There are a ton of
options you can set for yourself by clicking on Edit >
Preferences. For several more features, see the review
above. There are also versions of Foxit Reader for mobile
device. One thing Foxit does not do is create pdf's, but
there are several freeware pdf printers that will print to pdf
anything you send to the printer. In short Foxit Reader is a
good pdf reader with lots of options.
2. PDF-XCHANGE VIEWER FREE
Download from http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer
This was a runner up in the dotTech review mentioned
above. On the Tracker website above there is a comparison
chart that shows most of the features of PDF-XChange Viewer
free. This reader can also be used as a pdf printer, but it
puts a watermark on the page, so I use a different pdf program,
PDF Creator, set as my default printer. Then, unless I
change the printer, it prints to a pdf whatever I send to the
printer. This makes it so I don't inadvertently do paper
prints that I didn't really want and I can see exactly what the
final print will look like from whatever program I am using before
I print it. I also have an exact copy to print from later,
if I need it. I have PDF-XChange Viewer Free set as my
default program to read pdf's, so when I click on a pdf it opens
this program and I can then read and/or print from it. On
the Tracker website there is a PDF Viewer Manual that you can
download free. Be careful when installing the program and do
read what it is asking. Be sure to uncheck the boxes for the
Ask Toobar and other junk during the installation or you get lots
of bloatware on your computer. PDF-XChange Viewer has search
capabilities to find terms in the current pdf or in all pdf's in a
location you specify. A major additional feature it has is
to OCR pdf's (Optical Character Recognition) that don't already
have the text layer with them. It does OCR for English,
French, German, and Spanish. To use the OCR feature open the
pdf in the viewer and click on the OCR button at the top of the
screen. It doesn't do a perfect job, but is fairly accurate
and very helpful in finding words in the pdf. I have used it
to OCR a book I had downloaded in pdf from Google Books, since
Google Book downloads don't have the text layer. It took
about an hour for a several-hundred-page book and gave fairly
accurate results when finished. I saved the text-layered pdf
of the book with a new name, so it didn't wipe out my original
non-text-layered pdf of it. You can use this program to
extract or add pages to a pdf, rotate them, etc. It also
allows you to write on pdf's and I've used it to fill out pdf
forms, then saved the filled-in form with a new name and printed
it or emailed it. It allows you to put text boxes wherever
you want on the pdf and enter text in them. These text boxes
can have borders of varying thickness or else be set to zero-width
so only the text shows without the box around it. I've found
this program to be very helpful and use it regularly.
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Freeware Corner Page or Don's
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