Can anyone recommend an acrobat pro alternative?

[leob]

6 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

I tried a reboot - still bombs as soon as it tries to open a pdf?

try a clean user account - create a new account in System Preferences and try there.

[lacerto]

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[v_kyr]

Should also be possible with Graphics2D there too, though you would have to see if it runs performance wise also adequate in time then. For C# and Java the syntax of the two languages is very similar, also the execution of the code in a VM can be counted among these similarities. - Related to MacOS, even there is VS for MacOS and so C#, there are a bunch of prerequisites and dependencies needed for that one, so a native version might be better suited here. For a native MacOS port you would have to go the ObjC/C-C++/Swift route then.

[lacerto]

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[v_kyr]

36 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

However there does not seem to be so much demand anymore now that we know about PACKZVIEW, and hopefully PDF Checkpoint, too, evolves in a way that will include ouput preview amongst its tools.

Can't tell for sure, but I believe PACKZVIEW is first of all meant for prepress business oriented usage and thus not that much for common end users outside of that business domain. In contrast to that, the PDF checkpoint tool I once pointed to, is here more general usable, probably also for common end users.

51 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

The actual code is pretty much library and control dependent so the app probably needs to be more or less completely rewritten.

That's mostly always the case when dealing with crossplatform development, as OS systems and their own provided libraries and app development concepts are usually very different here.

However, good project work so far!

[Lorox]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

Can't tell for sure, but I believe PACKZVIEW is first of all meant for prepress business oriented usage and thus not that much for common end users outside of that business domain. In contrast to that, the PDF checkpoint tool I once pointed to, is here more general usable, probably also for common end users.

I'm not so sure about that: considering my own needs as a graphic designer who sends PDFs to print services every now and then, I generally and primarily just need to check my PDFs in regard to correct colour separation, ink coverage and overprintig. For this purpose PACKZVIEW seems to be absolutely sufficient and easy to use, too.

Judging from the info on their website PDF Checkpoint is actually quite comprehensive and may offer a lot more than what I (and probably other ussers, too) need on a regular basis. The advanced features of PDF Checkpoint – e.g. like converting colour profiles in PDFs etc. – may, however, be be extremely useful, when you come across problems in your PDFs hat you cannot solve by just going back to Publisher, changing a colour and/or some setting there and then exporting the PDF again.

[v_kyr]

12 minutes ago, Lorox said:

I'm not so sure about that: considering my own needs as a graphic designer who sends PDFs to print services every now and then, I generally and primarily just need to check my PDFs in regard to correct colour separation, ink coverage and overprintig. For this purpose PACKZVIEW seems to be absolutely sufficient and easy to use, too.

See the following posting from the user, which somehow resembles what I overall mean here ...

On 2/18/2021 at 2:52 PM, loukash said:

Well, for the fun of it, I have requested a "product key", and this is what I've got:

Quote

Dear [loukash],
Thank you for requesting PACKZVIEW. However, we cannot approve this request.
This is an invalid website. The website URL and e-mail address should be from an existing labels/packaging company.
For more information, please contact the Hybrid Support Team

Not being "an existing labels/packaging company", obviously I don't apply.

... so despite the usuability of that software, the software vendor might be (for several understandable reasons) more interested in applicable business cutomers at all.

[Fixx]

19 hours ago, Lorox said:

Judging from the info on their website PDF Checkpoint is actually quite comprehensive and may offer a lot more than what I (and probably other ussers, too) need on a regular basis. The advanced features of PDF Checkpoint – e.g. like converting colour profiles in PDFs etc. – may, however, be be extremely useful, when you come across problems in your PDFs hat you cannot solve by just going back to Publisher, changing a colour and/or some setting there and then exporting the PDF again.

Give it a try if you use mac. It is quick and fluid but does NOT supply print preview where you could check ink coverage, overprinting and rich black, of which rich black check would be most wanted feature.

I am not keen on convert features as they are more prepress functions. If there is a problem with file you should go back to original file and fix it as it is probably a work flow problem that should be corrected. (Of course if you get an advert with problems it may be easier just fix it and pass on.)

Edited February 23, 2021 by Fixx
sorry, missed one crucial word... "NOT"

[Lorox]

51 minutes ago, Fixx said:

Give it a try if you use mac. It is quick and fluid but does supply print preview where you could check ink coverage, overprinting and rich black, of which rich black check would be most wanted feature.

As I do use a Mac I may actually do give it a try – thanks for pointing me to PDF Checkpoint's print preview functions (which I wasn't sure about). As it is I didn't find explicit info or screenshots for this on their product website – so I sort of concluded that maybe they (surprisingly) didn't care so much about it... 😥

[lacerto]

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[Fixx]

oops sorry, I did not write "NOT" word n my post....

[Lorox]

2 hours ago, Fixx said:

oops sorry, I did not write "NOT" word n my post....

Well... so IF they added that feature, PDF Checkpoint might actually be useful for me. Guess I'll wait then before giving it a try...

[lacerto]

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[leob]

1 hour ago, Lagarto said:

But the bad news is that Ghostscript itself does not currently seem to be supported on Big Sur, neither in Rosetta 2 (Intel) nor in native M1, 

Ghostscript works for me on Big Sur, I use the installer from here:

https://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/

[lacerto]

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[v_kyr]

On 2/26/2021 at 11:55 PM, Lagarto said:

The good news: practically all of the core of the code seems to be directly supported by Microsoft in their implementation of Visual Studio 2019 for macOS so support for TIFF format and the blending functions required would be available also on macOS build (both multiply and screen that are needed in superimposing the initial grayscale TIFFs colored and having the dynamic over-the-TAC pixel screen shown on top, and casting the output for the zooming viewport in doublebuffered bilinear/bicubic view, are supported in a way that would be more or less ideally rendered with equivalent native methods and using macOS kinds of controls, the equivalents in Mono/Xamarin for the PictureBox and standard controls like Checkbox, Label, TextBox and common dialog boxes like Color, OpenFileDialog etc.).

Be forwarned the MS Visual Studio 2019 for macOS  installment is huge, it has a lot of needed lib dependencies. - Apple offers a bunch of image related functions in it's Core Image library (beside UIImage etc. libs), which might be helpful for your porting over tasks.

[lacerto]

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[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, Lagarto said:

...but with its complex dependencies it may be too cumbersome and might only work well on Linux. So it may be that the learning curve is equally steep with porting as it would be in doing the whole thing in Xcode.

That's always the overall time consuming difficulty in porting platform framework dependent apps. - Further .Net C# for Mac will behave and offer slightly different things here, since it's no 1:1 port of everything that Windows supports and so has to adapt to the underlayed Mac specifics. Another point to think about is, that Mac users commonly might not be used or willing to preinstall some .Net C# MS & Mono runtime package dependencies for their platform in order to be able to run a program.

All in all it might be less stressing to just reimplement the program's functionality then here with the means of the Apple ecosystem, namely via Swift/ObjC/C++ in Xcode. It's also a chance to familiarize yourself a little bit with Swift (which is nowadays the defacto dev language on Macs) and the by Apple supplied system supporting libraries, as far as you already didn't.

[lacerto]

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[v_kyr]

22 hours ago, Lagarto said:

Considering the nature of the task (front end on a utility run via command shell and that itself is not directly developed for macOS) -- the users who want to get any benefit of the app need to be willing to do a bit more than a standard macOS user who expects to get pixel polished stuff from the App store  -- what they get is after all much more than monochrome TIFF output that they'd get if they ever learned to enter GS commands in Terminal.

All well and right, but as you know this may possibly then put off inexperienced users from using it at all, even it's a useful tool then. - Thus the easier to install and being able to use it is  always something on the plus side here for casual users.

[lacerto]

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[loukash]

18 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

So, coming soon:

Fantastic!

16 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

I picked a route that requires High Sierra or later

Since Acrobat X should run up to Mojave, the most important compability test will be Catalina.

 

[v_kyr]

24 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

There are still things to learn, e.g. creating the zoom viewport ...

See for example IKImageView from the ImageKit, that already offers a bunch of things ...

Quote

class IKImageView

The IKImageView class provides an efficient way to display images in a view while at the same time supporting a number of image editing operations such as rotating, zooming, and cropping. It supports drag and drop for the NSFilenamesPboardType flavor so that the user can drag an image to the view. If possible, image rendering uses hardware acceleration to achieve optimal performance. The IKImageView class is implemented as a subclass of NSView. Similar to NSImageView, the IKImageView class is used to display a single image.

PDF Annotation Editor  (sample which shows how to translate between user mouse coordinates and PDFDocument coordinates), there are other Cocoa based samples for Core Graphics and Core Image related imaging tasks etc. - Usually there are a lot of MacOS programming examples available (if you know where to look/search after these). However, if you need some help or concrete infos in this regard, then let me know and I will try to give some hints and resources.

BTW, there should be now a Visual Studio 2019 für Mac 8.9 Preview (with .NET 6 support) available, in case you are interested in actual IDE stuff changes there. Though it probably won't add that much new things of interest for your specific tasks here (new Quick Actions, Refactorings, IntelliSense enhancements ...etc.).

[Fixx]

13 hours ago, loukash said:

Since Acrobat X should run up to Mojave, the most important compability test will be Catalina.

 

Lots of users have stopped at Mojave as we still use Adobe CS a lot. I would rather not use Acrobat though as it is very clumsy and buggy.

[loukash]

8 hours ago, Fixx said:

Lots of users have stopped at Mojave as we still use Adobe CS a lot.

Me stuck with El Capitan, but that's also because I need compatibility with a bunch of "obsolete" but fully functional Firewire audio interfaces that still run perfectly on El Capitan with user-hacked drivers, but barely on Sierra or higher.

8 hours ago, Fixx said:

I would rather not use Acrobat though as it is very clumsy and buggy.

Haven't installed any of my Schmadobes on Mojave yet. Will try.