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Introduction
System Requirements
IMPORTANT! FREE vs. PRO version
Uninstalling the program
Command Line option
Keyboard Shortcuts
Please note that from Build 3.x of the PDF-XChange Editor our help files are provided in primarily via our online Help
systems though a download of the entire contents is also generally provided in PDF format if required – any older
Viewer Help files in ‘CHM’ HTML format are not up to date and should be deleted from your system.
Tracker Software Products Ltd are the authors and publishers of a number of award winning software applications
and developer toolkits including the best selling PDF-XChange and PDF-Tools products for the creation,
manipulation, viewing, editing and printing of ISO standard compatible PDF files.
Our tools are used by millions of clients around the world to work with the now ubiquitous Portable Document Format
(PDF) created by Adobe Inc and released as an open standard to provide a common means to present documents
that would always look the same when viewed on a user’s PC even if the Viewing party did not have all the fonts
and images present on their own PC - could be contained within the PDF file to ensure common viewing.
To accompany the standard format, Adobe created a free viewer to ensure that anybody could view distributed PDF
files freely without requiring the purchase of any additional software - the viewer was made freely available.
To create PDF files the user could purchase Adobe Acrobat from Adobe direct or as the specification of PDF format
was freely available to competing software authors - software applications from 3rd parties quickly appeared and this
healthy competition along with the stability of a freely available viewer at no cost has ensured that the PDF format
has now become 'the' preferred method to share documents between Government agencies, departments privately
and for companies large and small.
Everybody was happy, Adobe was the philanthropic author of a world wide standard available to anyone, End users
and Suppliers could share all manner of documents and information and there was a healthy 3rd party software
community expanding the market and ensuring that inexpensive solutions for creating and manipulating PDF files was
available, for even the smallest business and private user - whilst Adobe remained at the top of the heap, providing
heavyweight commercial solutions for big business.
And then ... for some reason only known to Adobe, they decided that some functionality would be available to users
of their free Adobe Reader only if they used a product officially 'certified' to offer this functionality by Adobe - all
competing software applications would now have to apply to Adobe for a certificate or the new functionality would not
be possible with files made by competing and 'non' certified PDF creation and manipulation tools.
To be clear - we are not talking here about the creation of PDF files - but the ability to see, modify and use files
already created and then to be viewed in Adobe's free PDF reader, most specifically commenting and annotation
added to PDF files by non-Adobe creation tools - these could not be read by the Free Adobe Reader!
Suddenly the 'Open' PDF format was not so open and it was concern that Adobe would continue to extend this in the
future to regain some degree of control over who can create software with the ability to offer advanced PDF creation
and manipulation functionality - whereas in the past, the primary reason for the success of this standard format has
been the fact that any software company has been free to create products for the purpose without interference from
any party - including Adobe.
And that is why 6 years ago we decided to create the 'Free' PDF-XChange Viewer to allow PDF files created by any
software (not just ours or Adobe's) that adheres to the open PDF format specification as defined by Adobe - to take
advantage of these extended features.
However - we have not stopped there and we are now pleased to continue the legacy of the FREE PDF-
XChange Viewer with the all NEW PDF-XChange Editor !, We have added a host of useful features and
functionality that users have told us they would find advantageous and usually only found in paid for software - such
Introduction . 2
PDF-XChange Editor v3.x
