'ANY' PDF?

[jaydear]

Pedant dep't reporting for service. In a promo email from Xara they say "With Xara Designer Pro+ you can make any PDF fully editable again...". That's a big claim. What about locked PDFs and fillable PDFs I wonder?

[Chris M]

I was sat in front of a machine with Pro+ installed, but didn't check the version. I presume latest.

PDF with fillable fields imported without issue, and I could select and edit the fillable parts.
PDF that was locked by password from edits required the password. It didn't import and then ask for the password, it simply wouldn't import without it. As expected, once I entered the password I was free to wreak havoc on the PDF.

[Acorn]

I'm with Chris here.

Any locked PDF needs its password first and foremost.

I picked a fillable form at random: https://images.sampleforms.com/wp-co...uest-Forms.zip.
I dragged the PDF onto my design and got the form on the third page complete with blank Text Areas and checkboxes (Named type:formfield:checkbox) set to Dingbats all in an Annotations layer. The checkboxes also have a hidden grey group to fill in the area.

The things that need work are:

• I had to hunt down off-page artefacts (e.g., 47 0px lines).
• Preview does not enable any Interactive Form Fields - you have a dumb presentation.
• Form logic.
• Field validation.
• Text Area labelling.
• Checkbox input type toggling.

The Xara claim is only true on the design page for fillable forms in that you can input text.
I have not found any simple way to tick a box.

PDFs without form elements will import readily.

There is no magic OCR conversion.

I have imported a pure image PDF of size 45MB to render as a JPEG; it took a long time.

I have imported the Xara PDF Help Manual. Even tried with a 115MB German version.
I would not then use Xara as a DTP to edit or maintain such a document.

@jaydear - what are your needs?

Acorn

[Chris M]

The question was, is the following Xara statement true? "With Xara Designer Pro+ you can make any PDF fully editable again...".

Well, if you were a lawyer, politician or marketer, then yes, yes it will edit a PDF. The use of the word 'fully' would be the arguing point.

Using the same logic, I am a cricketer. I can hold a bat, and I'm confident I would be able to occasionally hit a ball every now and then if the bowler was an inexperienced child between the ages of 4 and 6. Ergo, I am a cricketer.

However, if your definition of a cricketer is someone who can hit a ball travelling at speed, and then run between two sets of sticks jammed into the ground, then you might want to dispute my claim.
If your definition of editing a PDF involves fillable form manipulation, and/or possible other edits that Adobe, Nitro, Wondershare etc. use, then you might want to look upon the marketing as being just that...marketing.

[jaydear]

We all get a lot of advertising fluff in our inboxes and the term "any pdf" in Xara's advert immediately caught my eye. Intentional or not, it's incorrect and misleading and should have said something like "any of your PDFs". I've never had any problem editing any of my PDFs in any version of XDP since I started using it, including ones that I made in many versions of CorelDRAW many years ago, so for me and I suspect everyone else that's secured a pdf and lost or forgot the password, this latest and greatest version has no amazing new PDF opening capability whatsoever and won't do what it claims, that is, make any PDF fully editable!

[handrawn]

in the UK a marketing claim would be considered mis-leading if it was felt that your ordinary punter could not read between the lines; marketing is spin, you always have to read between the lines - that said it is an art in itself [as in politics]

the claim is you can make any PDF fully editable again

key here is the word again - if the PDF was never editable in the first place, for whatever reason, it falls outside the scope of the claim

also fully a word with no precise legal definition, but in this context it can be taken to mean as fully as it is intended by whoever created it

Xara used to say designer pro [before the pro+ schism with magix] was the only design program you would ever need [or words to that effect] - applying the reading between the lines test that did not mean it would do every design job on the planet, just for those jobs it would do, you would not need anything else [which when you think about it is not saying a lot]

[jaydear]

In 2013,and being keen about the technology, I bought a new hybrid vehicle. On the back window there was a factory label proclaiming "4wd". Same label as on their other 4wds. It did have four wheels and they were all driven. That was about it though,lose grip to one wheel and call for roadside assist. Of couse it was misleading...
Once bitten, twice shy