Pdf reader anyone?

[mnn.mxm]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering what was everyone view on the need for a pdf reader in the Affinity Suite. Do you all think it would be a good addition or useless? If any Affinity devs hang around here I would love to know their view and whether it is being considered.

Personally, I use Affinity sparsely (haven't transitioned from Adobe yet, although I would wish to) and one of the things that I find tedious with Affinity is to have to open pdfs with Publisher. Too heavy. A good pdf reader is one that is light, opens quickly, with just the right amount of functionality.

Cheers,
M.

[Komatös]

5 hours ago, mnn.mxm said:

A good pdf reader is one that is light

Most modern web browsers are capable of displaying PDF files. You do not need an extra PDF reader for this.

[mopperle]

I've used Adobe Acrobat Pro in the past and then switched to PDF-Xchange Editor. Opening e.g. a 80 MB pdf file takes 2 seconds. In Firefox it also takes 2 seconds

So really no need for something else.

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, mopperle said:

I've used Adobe Acrobat Pro in the past and then switched to PDF-Xchange Editor.

PDF-XChange Editor is a great piece of software, but it’s for Windows only. However, I’m sure there must be competitively priced Mac alternatives that are equally capable.

[mopperle]

On Mac, if you only need a reader, Safari does its job. Ich want to do more with pdfs, there are tools like Foxit or pdfexpert, but meanwhile they are all on a subscription base (except Nitro) and not really cheap.

[kaffeeundsalz]

For macOS, there's Skim which I can highly recommend.

For Windows, have a look at Sumatra PDF.

Both applications are free and open source. It's true that for simple PDF viewing, today's web browsers already do a pretty good job. But if you need a standalone application with some more features, these might be what you're looking for.

[Bryan Rieger]

On macOS I typically just use Apple’s Preview for PDFs, but I also keep a copy of PDF Viewer installed as it’s a great alternative and also works great on iOS and iPadOS. 

[Twolane]

I've been using the free version of Foxit PDF viewer/reader for years. There's a Mac version, too.

[mnn.mxm]

Alright, thanks all for your inputs. Short answer is thus no!

I do agree that there are plenty of options out there often free which are good to use. However sometimes having a software integrated to a Suite does helps to develop some more intelligent/bespoke features, especially considering Affinity native interoperability between the 3 software. For instance your comments on the pdf reader could be directly imported on Publisher to update it and they could even follow your predefined paragraph/character styles, or you could also retain layer structures, etc.

I think it could give Affinity an edge where competitors like Adobe have failed.

 

[GarryP]

I don’t know how having a new PDF reader would achieve what you want.

Whatever changes/comments/etc. that were made in the PDF reader would need to be consistent with the PDF file format, rather than the Affinity file format, and Serif have no agency with regards to changes to the PDF file format.

Either that, or there would need to be some extra file to contain the changes/comments/etc. and that might start to make things more awkward.

Or, the PDF reader would have to somehow open both the PDF and the original Affinity document in order to keep them both ‘synchronised’, and that would probably cause all kinds of trouble.

I just don’t see how what you suggest could be done in a way which wouldn’t be a lot of extra hassle and potential problems with little benefit.

Or have I misunderstood what you are asking for?

[PaoloT]

On 3/12/2025 at 9:46 AM, Alfred said:

I’m sure there must be competitively priced Mac alternatives that are equally capable.

An editor I like and use, when I don't absolutely need Acrobat, is PDF Expert. Not the cheapest one, and the pay-once version has some limitatins, but it is fast, smooth, powerful, reliable. Shame they never added selective PDF protection (that is, however, in Publisher).

It still misses the advanced preflight features of Acrobat, but I personally don't need them that often.

Paolo

 

[PaulEC]

I used to use Foxit Reader, but I've now gone over to PDF24 Reader, which is quite basic, with a clean, uncomplicated UI. There are so many options available, I really don't see any need to build one into Affinity.