From 4829c89a5d195770bed8bcc07d063e3db1519e7b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Adam T. Carpenter" Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2020 08:30:07 -0500 Subject: added some drafts, finished acrobat reader post --- ...es everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html | 69 ++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 69 insertions(+) create mode 100644 drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html (limited to 'drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html') diff --git a/drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html b/drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c2a5504 --- /dev/null +++ b/drafts/why does everyone insist on using adobe acrobat?.html @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +

Why Does Everyone Use Adobe Acrobat [Reader]?

+ +

+ This is something that I've never been able to figure out. All through high + school I had to use PDFs. And if you wanted to open a PDF, everyone understood + that you needed Adobe Acrobat Reader. Even web sites where you downloaded PDFs + insisted that in order to open them, you were going to have to follow a + download link to make sure you have Acrobat on your PC. +

+ +

+ Fast-forward a few years into college and I'm using PDFs more than ever. Every + professor ever is scanning and uploading course material, so out comes Acrobat + Reader for literally every teacher and student. At this point I was actually + used to using Firefox (PDF.js) to view PDFs for a couple of reasons. First of + all, Firefox usually opened PDFs faster than Acrobat Reader did. Reader was + getting bigger with every release, and eventually had a monstrous UI to load + up every time I wanted to open a tiny PDF file. Second, Firefox had smooth + scrolling for page-width documents. Reader was getting slower and laggier with + each release, to the point where scrolling through a PDF was no longer buttery + smooth but jittery and stuttery. It also seemed like Reader purposefully + wouldn't slide the page when you used a mouse wheel. It would jump down a few + lines at a time like it was simulating the down arrow. +

+ +

+ By my senior year I had switched from Windows to Linux full-time and it was + then I found out about MuPDF and from then on + things were never the same. It's literally the best PDF reader I've ever used, + and I tried out quite a few. There are desktop and mobile apps. It opens + almost instantly. It lets you easily resize the page with excellent keyboard + shortcuts. There are no giant menu bars on either side of the page to squish + the document down to an unreadable size. Having a dozen of them open at once + doesn't bog down my PC. It's also available for all of the relevant operating + systems I've used (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, FreeBSD)! Oh and password-protected + PDFs are supported as well. +

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+ It's a fantastic piece of software And the best part is it comes with a + variety of tools to edit and manipulate PDFs as well. If the folks I went to + school with thought you needed the free Acrobat Reader to view a PDF, they + sure as heck thought you needed to buy Acrobat Pro to edit one. Some of them + refused to pay for it and used a variety of online services to upload, split + or merge, and download PDFs. I honestly for the life of me can't understand + why. MuPDF comes with mutool, which does all of the things I + would ever need to do with a PDF. It can attempt to convert a PDF to other + formats, like HTML. It can split and combine documents. It can even create + them from scratch and sign them. +

+ +

+ It's also free and open source. Can you imagine that? PDF viewing and editing + being free and open source? It's AGPL (in addition to being commercially) + licensed by the creators. The only slight drawback is the desktop version + apparently does not yet let you fill out forms. Not sure why but this isn't + something I use very frequently. +

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+ It's not the hottest piece of tech out there, but it just plain works and + works really well. Maybe the only reason more people I know don't use it is + because Adobe is synonymous with the PDF format. It doesn't seem like that big + of a deal, but I feel like Acrobat has always been a piece of software that + has frustrated new or infrequent users in computing. And that's just not good. + Maybe the barrier to using MuPDF is the lack of GUI and abundance of + keybindings, but for me that's no sweat. I'd say to anyone to just try it out + and see if they like it. It is free, after all. +

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