The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

[Moderator note: this thread was split from the PDF-XChange Viewer thread.]

---

Old topic update: for quite sometime now, PDF-Xchange Viewer's (http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1436) homepage has been prominently displaying the following warning...

[url]http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer[/url] author wrote:STOP PRESS STOP PRESS STOP PRESS

The PDF-XChange Editor is now available and supersedes the PDF-XChange Viewer!

STOP PRESS STOP PRESS STOP PRESS

The current PDF-Xchange Viewer release available for download is v2.5.311.0 (also updated on 28 Oct 2014, as the changelog page confirms: http://www.tracker-software.com/PDFXV_history.html).

I have no idea about what Tracker Software roadmap for this products is and consequently, I decided to test PDF-Xchange Editor, currently at v5.5.311.0 (updated 28 Oct 2014; changelog is at http://www.tracker-software.com/PDFXE_history.html).

My findings are on the next post (http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... 054#p73054, a preventive measure should moderators decide to split this topic).

FTR, other PDFXV related topics:

• viewtopic.php?t=10386
• viewtopic.php?t=1981

it looks like Tracker Software is about to abandon a propserous PDF-Xchange Viewer (PDFXV) in favor of a less famous sibling with PDF editing features...

So, I tested PDF-Xchange Editor (PDFXE; http://www.tracker-software.com/product ... nge-editor), currently at v5.5.311.0 (updated 28 Oct 2014; changelog is at http://www.tracker-software.com/PDFXE_history.html).

Contrary to PDFXV, there is no readily portably packaged PDFXE available for download, only an installer. I was unable to (Uni)extract the installer, so I had to perform an install-copy-uninstall cycle to get to PDFXE files.

Compared to the predecessor, the program doubled in size (I ought to qualify this: my PDFXV folder contains only the executable and its settings, plus the separately downloadable help manual, and OCR files for 4 languages, namely "eng", "fre", "ita", and "spa"; the PDFXE folder, after some trimming, contains mainly the executable and settings, but there are sub-folders for 'Plugins', 'PluginsData', 'Dictionaries' -- currently for 3 languages -- and the separately downloadable PDF user manual).

Another difference is the fact that PDFXE now supports the loathsome ribbon toolbar, with no option to return to the thinner one that characterized PDFXV. The good news is that PDFXE can also be made portable with the addition of a 'portable.dat' empty file, making keep settings in its respective folder and leaving no significant traces on the system (tested under Windows XP Pro SP3).

http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor wrote:PDF-XChange Editor is smaller, faster and more feature rich than any other free PDF Reader/PDF Viewer/PDF Editor available. This free pdf editor download also allows users to try the extended functionality offered by the PDF-XChange Editor 'PRO' in evaluation mode -- for free. No PDF reader or Viewer offers more features than PDF-XChange -- or does so without compromising performance and quality...

Download PDFXE latest release from http://www.tracker-software.com/version ... ge-editor/.

Thanks for the roundup. I liked the Viewer - the Editor is much more bigger but it is still a good product at first glance (in Free mode).

The good news is that PDFXE can also be made portable with the addition of a 'portable.dat' empty file, making keep settings in its respective folder and leaving no significant traces on the system (tested under Windows XP Pro SP3).

Adding "portable.dat" seems not forcing the application to actually save settings - it runs without saving settings here (Win 8.1 Pro). History.dat is created automatically though.
Adding an empty settings.dat solves this - settings are saved if this file is present.

tproli wrote:Adding "portable.dat" seems not forcing the application to actually save settings - it runs without saving settings here (Win 8.1 Pro). History.dat is created automatically though. Adding an empty settings.dat solves this - settings are saved if this file is present.

I can confirm that -- I overlooked the fact when I found no traces...

I still prefer PDFXV, too, but PDFXE will sure come handy at times.

Just played with the new ribbon and it is not that evil You can drag it in the same line with the main menu, resulting in a collapsed bar: It looks acceptable to me. File size is almost 100 megabytes here which is a bit much but in turn many editing features are there.

Edit:
Downloading "32bit MSI Installer | 35 MB" worked fine with UniExtract

Edit2:
Using the 32bit version only (instead of the 32+64) + upx-ing exe/dll/pvp files + removing OCR plugin and dictionaries, etc resulted in a 14 MB total. Keeper now

Great findings, tproli. Thanks.

It is my belief that PDF-Xchange Viewer will not be abandoned any time soon. They have no reason to do that.

I have both the Editor and Viewer installed and they seem to be made to work together just from the fact in the bottom right corner there's a button that launches pdf xchange editor or viewer.

According to this review http://www.softerviews.org/PDF-XChange.html not all features in Viewer are available in Editor. Yet....

PDF-XChange Viewer has reached the end of its development and is now replaced by the Editor, which is still free to use except for Pro features. Both are faster than Adobe Reader, and the Editor is faster than the Viewer. The Viewer still has some features that the Editor lacks, or that are not free in the Editor. For the most commonly used features there are no banners, no watermarks on documents, and no limitations or restrictions.

On a side note, viewer uses less memory than editor but I dunno if there's actually any performance difference.

It seems that PDF-XChange Viewer has been discontinued:

The PDF-XChange Editor is now available and supersedes the PDF-XChange Viewer !

http://www.tracker-software.com/product ... nge-viewer
I won't miss.

No, it hasn't. That message is quite old and is just an announcement of that editor.

'Been using PDF-XChange Editor for some time now and just wanted to say that it works similar to PDF-XChange Viewer in terms of both functionality and portability.

Just remember!

PDF-XChange Editor 'Free Version' is free for private and commercial use, provided it is not bundled with other software for financial gain. In FREE mode, many menu items will be marked with a special marker indicating that the specific feature requires a license to use without, producing watermarks:

You can try any of these "Protected" features but, be very careful not to save your PDF if you do not want the watermarks to appear in the upper corners of each page in the document. Once a document is watermarked, there is no way to remove them without a license, so save a copy of the original PDF, before trying the PRO features in an unlicensed Editor. After purchasing a license for the Editor, use Document->Watermarks->Remove All to remove demo watermarks.

So I just edit and print the documents, without saving them afterwords.

Just a note that PDF-XChange is advertising a (non-free) Editor that's also portable. I'm a fan of Nitro PDF but pleased to see the effort:

http://www.tracker-software.com/product ... nge-editor
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-too ... able.shtml

Status: Untested

The freeware version is of course here in the database.

webfork wrote:Just a note that PDF-XChange is advertising a (non-free) Editor that's also portable. I'm a fan of Nitro PDF but pleased to see the effort:

http://www.tracker-software.com/product ... nge-editor
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-too ... able.shtml

Status: Untested

The freeware version is of course here in the database.

You may want to split / merge with PDF-XChange Editor, discussion starting at http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... 053#p73053

I am Baas wrote:You may want to split / merge with PDF-XChange Editor, discussion starting at http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... 053#p73053

Well I think that thread is more about the company dumping the Viewer program in favor of the for-pay Editor. I think they’re jus throwing out statements like that to encourage upgrading. If they do stop working on the freeware version, there's some thread edit work ahead.

@webfork

You were not paying attention, same as with the viewer, the editor comes in two flavors; a free and a pro one.