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Better than Adobe Reader?

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Pesala

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Posted May 29, 2007 at 12:03PM

I recently discovered PDF-XChange Viewer via a post on the Open Office forums. This free PDF reader can be downloaded from: click here

A day is not long enough to test a new product thoroughly, but so far I like it immensely, and have not discovered any problems yet. It looks like a much better solution than Foxit Reader,

It has an innovative viewer called a "loupe" that opens a resizable zoom window. This is easier to use than the dynamic zoom tool.

It also allows you to highlight text, and add text and graphics to PDF files, which is sometimes very handy.

I have already assigned it as my default PDF viewer.

If you haven't tried it yet, do take a look. I think it deserves to become more popular than Adobe Reader.

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Pesala

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Posted June 7, 2007 at 5:47PM

A problem reported today is apparently fixed in the next beta due for release this weekend.

This program is still new and developing fast.

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bretsky

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Posted June 9, 2007 at 4:10PM

Hi there, had this little problem which I emailed to the developer: (I sent a pdf attachment outlining the problem)

This is the problem I have, the image below is a 36Kb jpg and when I create a pdf of this document, using the pdf creater tool built into the program which is OpenOffice v2.2, writer, which is the word processing app of the program, as you can see it is pixelated to the point that the image is unreadable (a blur) and yet when I use another pdf viewer (Foxit reader) to view this document, there is no problem reading the image, so maybe a compatibility issue with OpenOffice suite v2.2? I have also created the same sort of documents using jpg images at a much higher resolution and I get the same blurred affect with this reader that I don't get with the other readers mentioned above.

I'm using Windows XP Home Edition and the the viewer version is PDF-Xchange viewer v1.0 buid 0017 May 21st 2007.

************************************************

and this was the reply:

Hi Brett,



Thanks for your report.

Problem is because this JPEG is saved as progressive JPEG.

Now the problem is fixed into build 0018 which will be available in days.



Best,

Tracker Software.

And that took about 10 mins all in all from posting to reply......not bad ah.

bretsky ;0)

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bretsky

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Posted June 13, 2007 at 12:10AM

Problem sorted out now with the new version 0018, this is in response to the above posting on Sat, 09/06/07@16:10.

bretsky ;0)

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Pesala

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Posted June 19, 2007 at 11:33AM

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:
The Pan and Zoom Window would be even better, in my view, if the zoom area zoomed from the centre like it does when you resize the loupe.

Ivan Tracker Support wrote:

Will add this. But you will need to use Alt key during re-sizing (as comments Rectangle now functions for the same functionality).

HTH

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bretsky

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Posted June 20, 2007 at 1:25PM

viewer v1.0 build 0019 out now from click here

bretsky ;0)

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Pesala

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Posted June 22, 2007 at 10:54PM

Build 0020 out already.

Check for updates from the Help menu.

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bretsky

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Posted June 23, 2007 at 12:45AM

Many thanx, just downloaded & installed it.

bretsky ;0)

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Input Overload

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Posted June 10, 2009 at 8:09PM

Do you have a download link to the latest build Pesala please? I'm using version 2.0.42.0 at the moment, is that the latest build. Great program, I've removed my ex favorite Foxit. BTW this thread is on the 'Tracker' site!

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tullie

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Posted June 10, 2009 at 10:41PM

I use Foxit,which is a lot smaller program,is this any better?

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Pesala

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Posted June 11, 2009 at 8:31AM

That depends on what features you need.

You will find that PDF-XChange has many more features and is far more customisable.

You can read my detailed review at click here which has been updated for the latest build. This includes several great new features — Internet Search Engines for selected text, add custom searches, undo/redo annotations, remember the last session.

I find Foxit horribly intrusive, trying to install toolbars etc.

Foxit is smaller, faster to load and uses less memory, but when viewing PDF files, PDF-XChange is faster and smoother when zooming. Using more memory is good, not bad. Programs can improve performance by caching data in RAM. As long as they release it when it is needed by other programs, that is fine. Memory usage can be configured in preferences.

Finding text in PDF files is substantially faster. I created a huge PDF file to test this:

Search 11,800 page document for a common word (7,100 occurences)

Foxit Reader = 6 minutes
PDF-XChange = 3 mins 5 seconds
Adobe Reader = 18 mins (estimate: 1120 found after 3 mins)

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