When we caught up with educator Dave Riddell on Twitter the other day, he was looking for a new low-cost tool to create and edit PDF files — the web's default format for sharing printable documents. Here, for the benefit of other Macintosh users, he shares his picks for free open-source PDF software.
PDF Tools for Mac
As an educator, I spend a significant amount of my time immersed in articles and reports as part of my research for grant writing, and curriculum and project development. I try and maintain a paperless office as much as possible, so most of my reading and annotating takes place on my laptop — a Mac.
Until yesterday, PDFPenPro was my tool of choice, allowing me to merge and remove pages from several files, sign digital documents, and annotate to my heart's content. Perfect! And at $94.95, it's a little easier on the pocket than Adobe Acrobat at $449.
Easier on the pocket, maybe, but not on the eyes. Or the nerves.
Unfortunately, PDFPenPro has never been the prettiest tool to use, nor the fastest or the most stable. This latter concern sealed its fate yesterday as an entire morning of edits and annotations refused to save. What now?
Enter Skim, a researcher's dream, with a price tag of $0. Add notes to documents, highlight text, and draw boxes and circles; your notes are saved in the PDF but will only be read by Skim, meaning you can get a clean version back at any time by just opening the file with with any PDF viewer. Want to share your edits? You can export the annotated file at any time.
Need to merge or edit pages in PDF documents? Open Source is your friend once again: PDFLab does the trick. And with FormulatePro (also free!) to help you complete uncooperative PDF forms, you're good to go!
A complete list of free PDF tools for the Mac can be found here:
http://search.macupdate.com/search.php?keywords=pdf
Dave Riddell
http://daveriddell.weebly.com/
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