Free pdf file reader

VanguardLH wrote:

Paul in Houston TX wrote:

Walter E. wrote:

I am looking for a free pdf reader with the ability to fill in pdf forms that I can
download and then fill in?

Windows 7 64 bit

Almost any of them can do that. Try several and use the one you like.
I use both Foxit and PDF-Xchange.
They are about 25 megs compared to Adobe's 250 megs.

Back in Jan 2013 when I last tested Adobe Reader to compare against
PDF-Xchange Viewer (not their later Editor product), the memory
footprints that I got for the two we

PDFXchange Viewer - 17 MB
Adobe Reader - 29 MB

Granted that the memory footprints may have gone up some since those
versions that I tested but I doubt an increase of 8MB (47%) by
PDF-Xchange Viewer (perhaps caused by moving to PDF-Xchange Editor)
would be matched by a 229MB (762%) increase in Adobe Reader.

To know the real numbers instead of making extravagant guesses, do you
actually have Adobe Reader and PDF-Xchange Editor both installed to see
how big is their base memory footprint? Load only the program (no PDF
file) for each to see the baseline memory footprint.

Okay, I installed Adobe Acrobat Reader DC mostly because of it was
reported as having better rendering quality. As per the other author
that took multiple screenshots of many PDF viewers (to which I link in
another of my replies here) between Adobe Reader, PDF-Xchange Viewer,
and Sumatra, Adobe Reader was the best quality. I did not install
Sumatra to test it as it is way too minimalistic for me.

After viewing several PDFs in both Adobe Reader and PDF-Xchange Editor
(not their old legacy PDF-Xchange Viewer product), Adobe Reader
definitely has better rendering quality for text documents. I got both
viewers to the same magnification and screen size (for the document
viewing pane) but did not change any font selections. I moved the title
and toolbars off the top of the screen so I wouldn't know for sure in
which PDF viewer I was looking at the same document and toggled back and
forth between those windows to see which looked better (easier to read,
nicer looking). To me, Adobe Reader had better quality. PDF-Xchange
Editor was more blocky and bolding was too heavy.

As for rendering quality of images, I only had one .pdf file that was
wholly an image. It was a scanned document (as image) saved into a PDF
file. There the rendering quality was very very close (for that
document). I still picked Adobe Reader as better but only by a smidgen.

As for load times of the two PDF viewers, they were very close. So
close that I probably could not accurately measure the difference when
ready with a stopwatch in one hand and clicking on the shortcut for
each. Adobe was a smidgen faster to load. Both loaded very fast;
however, I had already opened these apps so they were probably in the
Prefetch cache. I wasn't going to bother rebooting to check their
first-use load times.

Below are my disk and memory footprints for PDF-Xchange Editor and Adobe
Acrobat Reader DC. I only looked at the cumulative file sizes under
their install folders but they may have dumped some files elsewhere.

PDF-Xchange Editor Adobe Acrobat Reader DC
6.0 build 318.1 2015.020.20042

Disk footprint 190MB 220MB

Memory footprint
base (program only) 69MB 52MB (**)
100KB PDF file 81MB 66MB (**)
2MB PDF file 81MB 139MB (**)
10MB PDF file (*) 97MB 202MB (**)

Memory measurement was based on the full Working Set size, not the
Private Working Set often shown in Task Manager's Processes panel.

(*) PDF was an image from a scanned text document.
(**) Add 10MB for "Adobe Update Service", an NT service (armsvc.exe).

The disk footprint difference is trivial. Yes, Adobe Reader is bigger
but then it has a sandbox that PDF-Xchange Viewer/Editor does not, plus
Adobe supports older document versions of PDF (before 1.5) than does
PDF-Xchange (and many if not most non-Adobe PDF viewers).

Adobe Reader has a smaller memory footprint to load small PDFs (which is
about half of my PDFs) but outstrips PDF-Xchange memory usage on huge
PDFs (which is about a third of my PDFs). For computers with little
system RAM, this is of concern. For newer hosts with 4, 8, or more GB
of system RAM, not an issue. Remember that unused memory is wasted
memory. Hell, you'll find your web browser will consume far more system
RAM than this when you have many tabs concurrently open and/or have been
web surfing for many hours at a time. I noticed yesterday that Firefox
had eaten up 1.6GB of memory after using it for 10 consecutive hours
while visiting all those oh-so image and script bloated web sites.

Yes, Adobe Reader can consume more memory than PDF-Xchange Editor (for
huge PDFs). I don't read PDFs all day long. I probably read one or two
every week, if even that much. So, for me, the rendering quality is
more important and Adobe Reader wins on that comparison. I'll keep both
Adobe Reader and PDF-Xchange Editor (what I've been using for a while)
on my computer with a reminder to uninstall PDF-Xchange Editor if I like
Adobe Reader better. With my low volume of PDF viewing, that could take
months to decide.

Oh, by the way, I did not have to whitelist Adobe's sandbox in Avast
Free to eliminate conflicts with Avast's sandbox. That was a problem
when Adobe first introduced their protected mode sandbox. Avast fixed
that conflict a while ago.

The memory footprint is definitely higher in these later versions than
when I previously tested back in 2013; however, I suspect I looked at
the Private Working Set instead of the [full] Working Set for memory.

On Thu, 22 Dec 2016 00:17:02 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

After viewing several PDFs in both Adobe Reader and PDF-Xchange Editor
(not their old legacy PDF-Xchange Viewer product), Adobe Reader
definitely has better rendering quality for text documents. I got both
viewers to the same magnification and screen size (for the document
viewing pane) but did not change any font selections. I moved the title
and toolbars off the top of the screen so I wouldn't know for sure in
which PDF viewer I was looking at the same document and toggled back and
forth between those windows to see which looked better (easier to read,
nicer looking). To me, Adobe Reader had better quality. PDF-Xchange
Editor was more blocky and bolding was too heavy.

In the old Viewer there was an option to adjust the text itself; doesn't
appear to be in Editor.
If you haven't already tried this, in Edit - Preferences - Page Display -
Rendering there are a couple of options re. text display.
Depending on your screen, altering Resolution might help.

I've used Viewer/Editor for several years. Acroread had so many holes in it
and was so big it wasn't worth using. Then I found out that the
vulnerabilities could be reduced by turning off most of the functions that
made it Acroread, thereby reducing it to little more than a simple,
read-only app.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

PeterC wrote:

In the old Viewer there was an option to adjust the text itself; doesn't
appear to be in Editor.

Since Viewer is a legacy app they don't want you to use and Editor is
its replacement, I'll go with Editor. I didn't switch to Editor until
they finally got around after more than a year to get the security
settings from Viewer into Editor.

If you haven't already tried this, in Edit - Preferences - Page Display -
Rendering there are a couple of options re. text display.

The only setting there that would affect the blockiness and exaggerated
bolding is the "Enhance thin lines" option. I disabled it. If it has
any effect, it was so miniscule that I could not perceive a difference
in the quality of rendering. I changed smoothing from Cleartype to
antialiasing. It was hard to perceive but antialias mode was more fuzzy
(an extremely faint haze to the side of vertical strokes). Smoothing
line are and images are irrelevant when the PDF is a text document, so
those had no effect, an in the scanned doc which was wholly an image in
a PDF, those art & imaging smoothing options still had no effect.

I'm not saying PDF-Xchange Editor's rendering is bad. It looks quite
good but is a tad more blocky and heavy stroked than in Adobe Reader.
Editor's rendering is very good. Reader's rendering is better.

Depending on your screen, altering Resolution might help.

For LCD monitors, using any resolution other than its native resolution
(also its max resolution) results in loss of focus, color tinging, and
other artifacts. The display would look worse, not better.

I've used Viewer/Editor for several years. Acroread had so many holes in it
and was so big it wasn't worth using. Then I found out that the
vulnerabilities could be reduced by turning off most of the functions that
made it Acroread, thereby reducing it to little more than a simple,
read-only app.

Not true. PDF-Xchange Viewer (and about a year after they released
Editor) had options to disable Javascript, running commands on load (to
load the document into a different external handler), and opening
attachments on load. Adobe later added the same safety settings.
Viewer and Editor had annotation and it was later that Adobe added that.
I have Adobe Reader throttled (security options enabled) and yet it is
no more or less a viewer-only app than is PDF-Xchange Editor. I'm
saying those two are exactly equal products. If they were, someone
(probably Adobe) would be suing someone else.

As for being "so big", guess I must be lying in my test results, huh?

On Thu, 22 Dec 2016 15:19:59 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Depending on your screen, altering Resolution might help.

For LCD monitors, using any resolution other than its native resolution
(also its max resolution) results in loss of focus, color tinging, and
other artifacts. The display would look worse, not better.

Sorry, to be clear it was Resolution in the options box for Editor I meant.

I've used Viewer/Editor for several years. Acroread had so many holes in it
and was so big it wasn't worth using. Then I found out that the
vulnerabilities could be reduced by turning off most of the functions that
made it Acroread, thereby reducing it to little more than a simple,
read-only app.

Not true. PDF-Xchange Viewer (and about a year after they released
Editor) had options to disable Javascript, running commands on load (to
load the document into a different external handler), and opening
attachments on load. Adobe later added the same safety settings.
Viewer and Editor had annotation and it was later that Adobe added that.
I have Adobe Reader throttled (security options enabled) and yet it is
no more or less a viewer-only app than is PDF-Xchange Editor. I'm
saying those two are exactly equal products. If they were, someone
(probably Adobe) would be suing someone else.

As for being "so big", guess I must be lying in my test results, huh?

As I said, I've used Viewer/Editor for years, so I don't know about Acroread
any more.
Come to think of it, I ditched Acroread about 10 years or more ago, so my
comments were based on it at that time.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

PeterC wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

I'm saying those two are exactly equal products. If they were,
someone (probably Adobe) would be suing someone else.

Argh! I could've sworn that I said "I'm NOT saying ..." I review
before submit but sometimes my eyes see what I expect them to see.

As I said, I've used Viewer/Editor for years, so I don't know about
Acroread any more. Come to think of it, I ditched Acroread about 10
years or more ago, so my comments were based on it at that time.

The previous time that I looked at Adobe Reader was when it was still by
that name back in Jan 2013 (now it's called Adobe Acrobat Reader DC).
Yeah, way back when you last tried Reader, it was a disk and memory pig,
lacked the security options in non-Adobe PDF viewers, and definitely did
not have a sandbox back then.

On 19/12/2016 2:50 AM, Walter E. wrote:
I am looking for a free pdf reader with the ability to fill in pdf forms
that I can download and then fill in?

CutePDF
Foxit
Firefox the browser got built-in PDF reader