Ask Brian: PDF Software
Ho Ho Ho… Santa Brian has come to town and is giving you software…
Lately, several people have asked me about PDF software for their computers. Most people think that Adobe Acrobat is required to read and create PDF format documents. That's simply not true, and given that Acrobat Pro is several hundred dollars and has many more features than most of us need, let me try to simplify things and offer you alternatives.
In this missive, I'll explain what PDFs are, why and how they are used and then talk about software to read and create them and why you shouldn't necessarily need or want the software from Adobe
For those of you who don't want to read the whole thing:
1) to READ PDFs, use Foxit Reader (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/)
2) to CREATE PDFs, use PDF Creator (http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator/download)
Alright, now that the impatient ones are off downloading, let's talk PDF.
PDF is the Portable Document Format, which is an Open Standard for resolution and device independent presentation of documents. In other words, PDF allows you to view a document on any supported device and it will look exactly as the creator intended. If I make an HTML document (Web Page), for example, it will look differently depending on the browser I use, the Operating system, the screen resolution, color depth, etc. A PDF will look nearly identical whether I view it on a PC, a Mac, a hand-held, A smart-phone…just about anything.
One important use of PDFs is to ensure that your document is readable. Word, Excel, even PowerPoint might not be readable depending on which version of those programs a user has installed, but a PDF should always be viewable.
At the heart of the technology, PDF is basically a subset of the PostScript language, which is primarily a means for describing a page. Because of it's relationship to PostScript, many programs that create PDFs do so by simulating a printer driver. To create a PDF the user simply chooses File -> Print.
Another reason to use PDF is that typically, PDFs can not be easily changed. With a Word or Excel document, the recipient can change the text of the document, if they wish. PDFs can be protected from such things.
The downside of the technology is usually the software. The software most often recommended for PDF viewing is Adobe's Acrobat Reader, often just called "Reader" or "Acrobat Reader". The problem is that for several years, Reader has gotten more and more full featured, which has also made it extremely bloated. The download to install Reader is 27.5 MB… which is insane for what should be a simple viewer. Contrast that to another popular viewer (and my recommended solution), Foxit Reader, which weighs in at 1.5 MB. Add to that that Adobe's reader phones home often and nags you incessantly to upgrade and update to add even MORE bloat to your software… best to leave it out all together.
To VIEW PDFs then (which is all most people need to do) I say go with Foxit (link above).
So how then to CREATE PDFs? Well, the standard had been Adobe Acrobat Professional. But it costs a couple of hundred bucks and is way beyond what most people need. So PDF Creator from PDF Forge, is the suggested way. It's open source, which means it's free and we like that. And it does more than just create PDFs, you can generate other file formats, encrypt, email and it installs as a print driver, so anything you can print can be a PDF.
Now there are some operations you won't be able to do as easily, or even at all with PDF Creator. The advanced creation, interaction and other features of Acrobat Professional are missing, as is the ability to edit PDFs once they are created, but because you're creating them from source programs like Word or Excel, you're keeping the source documents anyway.
Most people will never need more in their PDF toolbox than Foxit and PDF Creator, and with all the money you save, you can tip your friendly neighborhood tech guy.
Here are those links again:
Foxit Reader: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/
PDF Creator: http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator/download
RSS