What reader will allow me to highlite PDFs?

August 27, 2004 7:50 AM

PaperlessOfficeFilter
I do my best to not print out PDF documents and I realized that I could reduce my printing to almost zero if I had a PDF reader that would let me hilite and save hilites and add my own notes. Acrobat Reader doesn't seem to do this.

What readers can do this? I prefer linux or MacOSX but I do have a laptop that can boot Windows.
posted by substrate to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Using Acrobat Reader 6.0 you can use the highlighting tool located in the comment toolbar (View -> Toolbars -> Commenting). If nobody answers first, when I get home I'll check on Mac OS X versions to make sure the same options are available, but I'm pretty sure they are.
posted by tetsuo at 8:05 AM on August 27, 2004

tetsuo- that's a feature of Acrobat Standard and Pro, not Reader. But yeah, that was my first thought. Shame you have to shell out $300 for it...
posted by mkultra at 8:14 AM on August 27, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks, I'm amazed that nobodies hacked something into xpdf or written a plugin.
posted by substrate at 10:46 AM on August 27, 2004

Yeah, either that or ghostscript, which can also read/write pdfs under osx.
posted by SpecialK at 10:55 AM on August 27, 2004

I'm looking right at it...Adobe Reader 6.0...maybe this feature is newly integrated into 6.0.2, but it is definitely just the reader, not the full Acrobat Standard or Pro.

Here's the help:

Adobe Reader Help: look at page 44.
posted by tetsuo at 11:12 AM on August 27, 2004

Apparently the documents have to be marked as allowing 'Commenting' for that to work (check File/Document Properties/Security). I checked over 10 PDFs that were left over in my temp directory (all freely available from the web, not eBooks or anything), and not a single one had that permission enabled. Way to go, Adobe.
posted by mcguirk at 11:44 AM on August 27, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks too tetsuo, I do believe that linux is still at version 5.x which would explain the missing features. I'll try MacOS X when I get home.
posted by substrate at 12:03 PM on August 27, 2004

How the heck do you UN-comment in AcrobatPro 6?
posted by RavinDave at 1:01 PM on August 27, 2004

I've never created PDFs but I've read plenty in the newest version of Adobe recently for a class I'm taking, and while Reader allows highlighting, the documents haven't. That's all I know, but just verifying what mcguirk said.
posted by tracicle at 2:47 PM on August 27, 2004

They really have to be marked as commentable? That sounds somewhat fishy, but I wouldn't discount it as a new feature. The versions that I worked on implemented highlighting as an annotation plug-in. Essentially, an annotation is a separate chunk of plug-in defined rendering and UI hoo-hah that can be inserted into the page object. Plug-ins are assigned privileges as to whether they will run completely in Reader or (what was) Exchange. The idea was that Reader just lets you read and Exchange lets you mess with the document.
posted by plinth at 4:57 PM on August 27, 2004