Instead of a providing a simple PDF reader to view PDF documents, Adobe want you to download a nearly 30Mb package just to read a PDF document. Do I really need the associated applications installed to provide update and photo album?

For my new notebook, I decided not to download Adobe Acrobat Reader. I knew there were many alternatives around so I went looking.

Given my inclination to run a purely opensource desktop, I started out looking for an open source pdf. It is interesting that there is an opensource PDF creator but there isn’t any open source PDF reader, at least not for the Windows platform.* (Wikipedia has a list of PDF softwares)

From reviews online, it seem like Foxit Reader 2.0 for Windows won many accolades so I went for it directly. The free version allows reading of PDF files, just what I needed to replace Adobe reader.

(*UPDATE: found 2 opensource PDF reader but not tested, Sumatra PDF and Apparition. Look like they are in the early stage of development but certainly worth looking out for.)

First Impression

The first thing you will notice when downloading Foxit Reader is the size, 1.56Mb. No need for a download manager to download a pdf reader here.

Installing is straightforward and simple.

Starting up and opening PDF document is noticeably faster although I don’t have an exact benchmark to back this.

If you just use Acrobat Reader to open PDF file, Foxit Reader pretty much provides the same function. The only thing that you may find absent is the ability to open pdf file within the browser. I don’t think you will miss this function since this function in Acrobat Reader commonly hangs the browser.

When you click on a pdf file link, just select Open with and the file will open up very quickly in a Foxit Reader window.

I had been using Foxit for 3 months now and I’m pretty happy with it. This is another great free software for your business.

Chinese support

Installing Chinese support for the Foxit user interface (UI) is very simple. Just select the language (in this case Simplified Chinese) from the Language menu. A prompt will alert you to download and instal the UI package. In a few second this is done (see below).

A restart of the reader shows that the UI languages had been changed. Simple.

Open in Chinese document is also not a problem. It seems to work even when I did not download the Eastern Asian Language Support addon.

Where to get it?

• Foxit PDF Reader is at http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
• Current version: 2.0
• Function: PDF file reader

Related Post:

• Create PDF file for free with PDFCreator

However many businesses are still under the impression that they require expensive software to generate PDF documents.

Each time I send a friend a document in PDF format, they will ask if I have a copy of Adobe Acrobat and they can use it to convert a few documents to PDF.

What they do not know is I actually use an open source program called PDFCreator to create it (print to be exact, read on to see how).

To begin, simply download the program from sourceforge. (Choose the AFPLGhostscript version *)

Run the installer program. This will create a virtual printer on your computer to print a PDF file.

To create a PDF file from any document,

1. select Print… from the File menu;
2. choose PDFCreator from the list of printers;
3. click OK to print;
4. follow a simple dialog ;
5. click Save to save the PDF file to your folder.

That it! Open the document in Acrobat reader and look at the result. Easy right?

Chinese support

Translation for Simplified Chinese available from the translation download.

PDFCreator is able to create Chinese text from the program just as if it is printed to a physical printer.

Where to get it?

• PDFCreator is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
• Current version: 0.9.2
• Function: PDF file creator

* Difference between AFPL Ghostscript and GNU Ghostscript

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