[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Pierre Lawrence

Hitch's and Quoth's posts are certainly the last word on the subject and much appreciated, but I do take issue with Hitch's assertion that Adobe's editor is not a text editor, and her apparent bewilderment as to why I would think “that Adobe even really markets it that way.” While not referring to it as a text editor as such, Adobe offers an upgrade to Acrobat that conveys the same functionality.

I don't know your experience or background with regular, everyday office-productivity tools, like word processors, spreadsheets, text editors, etc., but, please see my comments below the succeeding paragraph:

If you boot up Acrobat, for example, and click on the “Edit PDF” button in the right-hand panel a window will come up telling you if you upgrade to Acrobat Pro, you can “easily make text changes, add or replace images, and insert new text in your PDF.” Clicking on “learn more” advises you that you can “keep the good times rolling” by subscribing to Acrobat Pro for about $180 per year, payable monthly. Sounds like marketing to me.

Sure, they market it as "easily mak[ing] text changes" and all that rot. But let me ask you this:

Do you open up Acrobat DC, or Pro, to a blank page? Ever? Is there a "file-->New" (or equivalent) on the main menu? Do you type in it, like you would from Word, Libre Office, Open Office, etc.? Do you start in it, from scratch, create a new document and use DC (et al) for the entire process?

Or, do you you pretty much always--always--have to select a pre-existing file? One that has already been baked, by some other piece of software? (n.b.: you can in fact, create a new blank file. But notice that this option is the last option, in Acrobat's "EDIT" PDF tool box.

Other than what amounts to basically one line of text, in Adobe's marketing blather, there really isn't anything at all that says "make huge changes to your documents, like a word processor, using DC." There just isn't. If you look at even their blather (promo and Help) pages, everything is focused on manipulating, scanning, signing, existing PDFs.

Sure, they tout the "edit PDF" functionality--but didja ever notice that in all their examples, cool-looking mobile screenshots, etc. all they show is someone changing 1-2 words, tops? You don't see an entire paragraph being revised. You certainly damn sure don't see text across paragraphs being revised.

And in all that--all the stuff, everywhere, that Acrobat puts out, no where, no place, does it call DC a "text editor" or a "word processor." Because it just isn't.

My final comment about this, is: I use this professionally and commercially, daily. Not even just once a day, but probably, all in, 5-12x daily, for different files, books, documents, yadda. And you can, actually, do everything that you've mentioned--like renumbering pages and all that--but it's painful to do. You can "update" running heads and footers, but....half the time, it doesn't really work. Or it's better/faster to do it manually.

I also want to add that DC has functions that pretty much nothing else has, and it does those well. We tend to see/receive a TON of jpgs, from would-be children's book authors, uncompiled, and if you have DC, you can very easily take those pages, convert them (quickly) to PDF and then assemble them, using drag-drop or click and click again, into a full, final, PDF document. You can assemble PDFs, into a single document, or take a PDF and carve it into smaller documents. There are myriad things, in DC, that you can do, when you have nothing else but an extant PDF, or would-be source files that have not yet been put into their proper form.

The primary functions around DC are, make changes to, revise, split, join, etc. existing PDF documents---when you don't have access to the source therefor. 99% of the time, if I had the source files for most of the stuff I do, in DC, to PDFs, I wouldn't be using DC. I would make those changes in Photoshop, AI, InDesign, Word, etc.

PDF is the end result of a process. Unlike DOCX or .ODT, .pages, etc. in which the document is created initially--you then type in it or copy-paste, scan, do whatever the hell you're doing and when you hit SAVE, the document is still a DOCX, ODT, .pages, etc. document (stew!). PDF is the cake. And, sure, if you make a cake and leave out the sugar (my late FIL once made pumpkin pies and forgot the sugar...not kidding), you can try to add sugar to it, as a baked good, as you wish, but it's futile and never tastes right. It would be cheaper and less brain-damaging to just remake the damned pie. And that is the reality with PDFs--they are designed, intentionally, to be amenable to minor edits, post-production (although, from a production standpoint, this is a terrible idea--where is your Master File, then????), but for anything significant, for a host of reasons, it's better to go BACK to your master file, make the changes there and simply reissue the newly exported PDF.

Not to mention, above all else--it's FASTER. There is almost nothing you can do, in "edit PDF," In Acrobat DC Standard or Pro, that is not FASTER in Word, LO, Atlantis, Pages, etc.

That's the point I'm trying to make. If you want to be furious with Adobe, for misleading you around their marketing cruft, can't blame you--but they really don't, anywhere, say it's a Text Editor or Word processor.

Hitch