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software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

used to manage

Portable Document Format Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating syste ...

(PDF) documents. The distinction between the various functions is not entirely clear-cut; for example, some viewers allow adding of annotations, signatures, etc. Some software allows

redaction Redaction or sanitization is the process of removing sensitive information from a document so that it may be distributed to a broader audience. It is intended to allow the selective disclosure of information. Typically, the result is a document ...

, removing content irreversibly for security. Extracting embedded text is a common feature, but other applications perform

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronics, electronic or machine, mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo ...

(OCR) to convert imaged text to machine-readable form, sometimes by using an external OCR module.

Terminology

*''Creators'' – to allow users to convert other file formats to PDF. *''Viewers'' – to allow users to open, read and print PDF files. *''Editors'' – to allow users to edit or otherwise modify PDF files. *''Converters'' – to allow users to convert PDF files to other formats.

Multi-platform

Development libraries

These are used by software developers to add and create PDF features.

Creators

These create files in their native formats, but then allow users to export them to PDF formats.

Viewers

These allow users to view (not edit or modify) any existing PDF file.

AmigaOS

Converters

* Antiword: A free Microsoft Office Word reader for various operating systems; converts binary files from Word 2, 6, 7, 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 to plain text or PostScript; available for

AmigaOS 4 AmigaOS 4 (abbreviated as OS4 or AOS4) is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code developed by Commodore International, Commodore, and partially on version 3.9 develop ...

MorphOS MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like operating system designed for Power and PowerPC based computers. The core, based on the Quark microkernel, is proprietary, although several libraries and other parts are open source, such as the Ambient desktop. The p ...

, AROS x86 * dvipdfm: a DVI to PDF translator with zlib support

Viewers

* XpdfReader: a multi-platform viewer for PDF files, Amiga version uses X11 engine Cygnix.

Linux and Unix

Converters

Collabora Online Collabora Online is an open source online office suite based on LibreOffice, enabling web-based collaborative real-time editing of word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and vector graphics. Optional apps are available for deskto ...

can be used as a web application, a command line tool, or a Java/Python library. Supported formats include OpenDocument, PDF, HTML, Microsoft Office formats (DOC/DOCX/RTF, XLS/XLSX, PPT/PPTX) and others.

Creators, editors and viewers

macOS

Converters

* deskUNPDF for Mac: proprietary application from Docudesk to convert PDF files to

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...

, image, and data file formats

Creators

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

: Creates PDF documents natively via print dialog

Editors

Adobe Acrobat Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and web services developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The family comprises Acrobat Reader (formerly Reader), Acrobat (former ...

: Proprietary PDF authoring suite * PDF Expert: Proprietary PDF viewer and editor. * PDF Studio: Proprietary software to view and edit PDF documents. * PDF Signer: Proprietary; fills forms and embeds image signatures in PDF documents

Viewers

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

: This bundled web browser has built-in support for reading PDF documents. *

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

: Includes a PDF viewer *

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

: Includes a PDF viewer * Preview: macOS's default PDF viewer; in Mac OS X v10.5 and later, it also can rotate, reorder, annotate, insert, and delete pages. It can also merge files, create new files from existing files, and move pages between files *

Adobe Reader Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and web services developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The family comprises Acrobat Reader (formerly Reader), Acrobat (former ...

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American software, computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to ...

's reader which is also available for Macintosh; Safari plug-in available * Skim, an open-source (BSD licence) PDF reader and note-taker for macOS *

Foxit Reader Foxit PDF Reader (formerly Foxit Reader) is a multilingual freemium PDF (Portable Document Format) tool that can create, view, edit, digitally sign, and print PDF files. Foxit Reader is developed by Fuzhou, China-based Foxit Software. Early ve ...

: Proprietary, freeware. Allows users to add elements to PDFs (e.g. arrowed comment boxes, text boxes, links, bookmarks, and images)

Microsoft Windows

Converters

: Can convert files into PDF or convert PDF files into other formats * ABBYY FineReader: Commercial PDF converter which converts PDF into Word (.doc), Excel (.xls), PowerPoint (ppt), and more * deskUNPDF: PDF converter to convert PDFs to Word (.doc, docx), Excel (.xls), (.csv), (.txt), more * GSview: File:Convert menu item converts any sequence of PDF pages to a sequence of images in many formats from bit to tiffpack with resolutions from 72 to 204 × 98 (

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

software) *

: convert HTML to PDF using ''Print'' > ''Save as PDF''. * gDoc Fusion: Proprietary, shareware; PDF views, edits, converts documents into PDF, XPS or Microsoft Word document; after 30 days a watermark is placed on documents in shareware version * OmniPage: Converts to and from PDF and other formats with many options. * Nitro PDF Reader: (

Freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

) Extracts Images in original resolution. * PDF-XChange: PDF Tools and PDF-XChange print driver allow conversion from many formats to PDF. A "lite" version of the print driver is free for non-commercial (home and academic) but places a watermark on documents * Qiqqa: Converts Microsoft Word document and Web Pages to PDF. * SWFTools: pdf2swf'' component converts PDF to SWF – command line with GUI wrapper * poppler-utils a collection of tools builds on poppler to convert PDF contents to everything * GraphicsMagick: Can convert PDF to PNG or other formats.

Creators

Editors

Viewers

* ABBYY FineReader PDF Viewer *

: Adobe's PDF reader is free for personal use. *

Evince Evince (), also known as GNOME Document Viewer, is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source document viewer supporting many document file formats including Portable Document Format, PDF, PostScript, DjVu, Tagged Image File Format ...

: a free (GPL),

PDF reader. Part of the GNOME desktop environment. A Windows port was available from version 2.28 to version 2.32. *

: Proprietary/freeware PDF reader, supports FDF import/export, saving filled forms; other extended functionality available via purchasable plugins. * gDoc Fusion: Proprietary/shareware to view PDF, XPS, Microsoft Word document, Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, Microsoft PowerPoint presentation or image files, included in the evaluation version of the product. Shareware version places a watermark on documents after 30-day eval. *

: Includes a PDF viewer. * GSview:

Open source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

and

Ghostscript Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization of documents in these language,, the display or prin ...

's viewer for Windows. *

Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is a Proprietary Software, proprietary cross-platform software, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft and based on the Chromium (web browser), Chromium open-source project, superseding Edge Legacy. In Windows 11, Edge ...

: Includes a PDF viewer. *

Microsoft Reader Microsoft Reader is a discontinued Microsoft application for reading e-books, first released in August 2000, that used its own .LIT format. It was available for Windows computers and Pocket PC PDAs. The name was also used later for an unrelated ...

: A discontinued PDF viewer in Windows 8.1. *

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curren ...

: Includes a PDF viewer. * MuPDF: Free lightweight document viewer. * Nitro PDF Reader: Freeware (though proprietary) PDF reader and creator. Supports three methods (specifying the file within the reader's interface, or dragging-'n-dropping a file onto the reader's Windows desktop icon, or "printing" to a virtual printer driver) of PDF creation (

not additionally needed), saving filled forms (AcroForms), text typewriter, markup/collaboration, and stamp signature (document signing). *

PDF-XChange Viewer PDF-XChange Viewer (now superseded by the PDF-XChange Editor) is a freemium PDF reader for Microsoft Windows. It supports saving PDF forms ( AcroForms) and importing or exporting form data in FDF/ XFDF format. Since version 2.5, there has been pa ...

: Freeware viewer with free OCR, supports FDF/XFDF import/export, saving filled forms, extended markup and export to image capabilities. * Qiqqa: Freeware PDF reader, indexer, tagger and annotator. Supports OCR and export of PDF text and images. * Sumatra PDF: A free (GPL),

PDF reader based on MuPDF. It also supports DjVu, XPS, CHM, Comic Book (CBR, CBT, CBZ and CB7Z) and eBook (EPUB, FB2, FB2Z, PBD, MOBI, PBR, TCR & ZFB2), TXT and image file formats (.tga, .gif, .jpg, .j2k, .png, .webp, .tiff). Supports automatic .pdfsync & .synctex reloading of PDF files so is well favoured as a LaTeX / pdfTeX viewer with forward - inverse synchronization. Using Ghost script it supports PostScript (.ps, .eps) files. * STDU Viewer: A freeware for non-commercial usage PDF reader. It also supports DjVu, Comic Book Archive (CBR or CBZ), XPS, TIFF, TXT and image file formats.

Mobile

Web-based

Creators

Converters

supported formats include OpenDocument, PDF, HTML, Microsoft Office formats (DOC/DOCX/RTF, XLS/XLSX, PPT/PPTX) and others. * Zamzar: Online file converter * Smallpdf: Offers free (trial) online PDF conversion (PDF to other formats and vice versa)

Editors

* PDFescape: an advertising and fee supported web service to view, create forms, fill out forms, and edit PDF documents from a web browser (requires JavaScript to be enabled) * PDFVue: a free web application that allows the user to view PDFs, comment and fill PDF forms from a web browser. Generates a watermark. * Smallpdf: Free (trial) web-based PDF software for editing, signing, compressing, merging, splitting, rotating, unlocking and protecting PDF files.

Viewers

* A.nnotate: a web service which views PDF documents as HTML in the browser, with annotation features. * Docstoc: a web service which allows viewing PDF documents online. *

Issuu Issuu, Inc. (pronounced "issue") is a Danish-founded American electronic publishing platform based in Palo Alto, California, United States. The company's software converts PDFs into customizable digital publications that can be shared via links ...

: a web service which allows viewing PDF documents online. *

Google Docs Google Docs is an online word processor and part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. Google Docs is accessible via a web browser as a web-based application and is also available as a mobile app on Android and iO ...

: a web service which views PDF documents as PNG images in the browser. *

Scribd Scribd Inc. (pronounced ) operates three primary platforms: Scribd, Everand, and SlideShare. Scribd is a digital document library that hosts over 195 million documents. Everand is a digital content subscription service offering a wide selectio ...

: a web service which renders PDF documents as HTML5 in the browser. * PDF.js: A Javascript-based library, with viewer, and browser extension. * PDFTron Systems: WebViewer. A free JavaScript viewer and annotator for self-hosting of web optimized PDFs.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:PDF software

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...