Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch
la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.
Did you ever notice how the default programs in Windows often aren’t always the best? Take Adobe PDF Reader as an example. It is a program that likes to use a lot of memory and run all the time, even when you aren’t using it. Adobe usually installs unwanted programs when you do updates, changes your system settings and many other things that you may not want.
There are a lot of good alternative PDF viewers. The one that I usually use is PDF‑Xchange Editor from Tracker Software. This program is the successor to the PDF‑Xchange Viewer. Its design has been totally overhauled, making it much clearer and easier to use. The program is easy to use with many different tools for working with documents including typing text and editing it, drawing diagrams, creating stamps, underscoring and styles, entering commentaries, notes and more. In fact, I haven’t personally used every free editing feature.
Here is a partial list of free features:
● Full Document Spellchecker
● Multi-Language document OCR
● Full Page Text Content Editing
● OCR image based/scanned PDF to fully text searchable PDF files
● Add Comments and Annotations to any PDF file (subject to security settings)
● Mark-up pages with text and objects
● Type directly on any PDF page
● Export PDF pages or entire files to any one of the supported Image formats
● Extract text from a PDF page/File
● Fill and Save forms to disk, email or ‘post’
● Full Java-script engine included
● Plug-Ins for major browser
● Auto Highlight Fillable Form Fields
● Document Search
● Add/Edit Hyperlinks to pages
● Support for PDF File Attachments
● Send PDF files via email from viewer
● Undo/Redo functionality for text editor
● Add/Edit/Move Bookmarks
You can also extract or delete entire pages from a long PDF file and embed new content like text, images, blank pages or entire PDF documents. PDF‑Xchange Editor can also convert documents between PDF and Word formats. It even includes an OCR (optical character recognition) for converting scanned documents into editable text. Note: I haven’t tested the OCR.
One of my favorite features is the tabbed interface. This feature comes in handy for things like when I edit the “History” column for the club newsletter. I can open all the PDF newsletter files for a given month and easily shift from one to another for viewing. If I want to repeat an item from an older newsletter, the copy and past feature makes it easy for me to “cheat”. You can also extract and/or export individual pages or the entire document.
Installation is simple and fast. When you run the program, you get every feature of the licensed program. When clicking on various items, a pop‑up window opens and informs you if you are attempting to use an enhanced feature. You can still use the feature, but any pages will be watermarked. This is a subtle method of getting you to purchase a license. If you do a lot of PDF editing, it might be a worthwhile purchase.
Like many programs, there is a “free” and licensed option. Very few free editors will let you add new content to documents. This alone is a good reason to make it your new default app for PDFs. You can download PDF‑Xchange Editor from the publishers web site. There is only a Windows version.
If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.