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Comment by albert_e | Hacker News Reader

Are you going to open that PDF in Adobe Reader?

If yes, Adobe has this friendly AI assistant forced into your face and overlapping floating toolbar on all sides of your document that you cannot get rid of to get a clean view of the document itself.

So your dream of a simple lightweight clutterfree PDF reader will remain a dream, unfortunately.

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There is the classic Adobe Reader release [0] (non-DC) that is still receiving updates [1].

[0] https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/ReleaseNo...

[1] https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/ReleaseNo...

It's even served by FTP. Nice!

AI assistants are this generation's Clippy.

Most browsers can open PDFs but can’t necessarily search large docs quickly.

I mean if he’s searching for a good PDF reader I doubt he’ll be opening it in Adobe Reader

I had assumed it went the way of Adobe Flash many years ago.

Well, you know what they say about assume...

Accidentally Turing complete?

It's still alive and kicking in anything government. Third party support for forms and other kinds of interactive stuff is ... lacking.

True but also, what actually is the best alternative that's also free? Non-rhetorical question, because I am averse to paying for what feels like a universal/commons piece of tech.

Someone must put in the effort to make something. Should they not be compensated for their time?

If they inform and ask after the fact, compensation should be voluntary.

When I was a Mac user, I found the built in Preview adequate to my needs.

I'm not an advanced user of pdfs so I'm not sure if there's anything major missing from these, but either Okular or just the built-in browser ones works well enough for my basic needs of reading and the occasional form filling for the desktop, and on android I use muPdf.

it's wild how shitty and hostile adobe's pdf reader is as a product. If I was in the planning room I'd roast the product as unusually offensive to most sensibilities.

Then again, I'm in no way running a billion dollar successful software company so what do I know?

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