![](/uploads/1/2/7/3/127369988/801144180.jpg)
We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. The following tables compare reference management software. Readers using the table to choose reference management software should note the product's 'latest stable release date'. An older release date suggests that the product is not currently supported and users may encounter technical issues and receive little to no technical support.
For probably the better part of 15 years, PDF has been the de facto standard for sharing, e-mailing, and printing documents. It is a well-supported format and Linux distributions have been able to read them since forever!The only problem is while Windows and MacOS machines can easily buy and install Adobe Acrobat Pro, there is no native Linux version. Still, there are a few good Linux PDF editors available, and I had a go at testing them for you.For the purposes of this article, I tested a variety of Linux PDF editors. Both and proprietary, with two PDF documents, a PDF generated by Wikipedia, as well as a large PDF from Adobe with many pages and images, in order to see how each program handled them. In this way, readers can see what happens when each program edits a PDF.
Did a reasonably good job at importing the Wikipedia-generated PDF. It wasn’t perfect – far from it – but it was readable. The large PDF with all the images was a struggle, unfortunately. Draw struggled so much that it hung each time and I was unable to open and edit that PDF at all. The good news, however, is that Draw does a very good job at importing PDFs created by office suites like Microsoft Office and LibreOffice.
I have done so very successfully in the past. Thus, in many use-cases, Draw could probably work just fine! Inkscapeis a really well-rounded vector graphics program, and it is used by graphic design professionals all around the world daily. I highly recommend it for such work, and best of all, it can import and edit PDFs! So perhaps should work well as a Linux PDF editor.
It was able to import both test documents very well and incredibly accurately. The only thing that might bother some people is that Inkscape is not a multi-page document editor, like Word or LibreOffice Draw. So it only imports one page at a time. That hasn’t bothered me, however, in the past I have edited many PDF’s page-by-page, just putting all the pages together again afterward with a tool like pdftk.
Master PDF EditorThe first proprietary application on this list, is an almost perfect drop-in replacement for Adobe Acrobat Pro. It runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac, and has commercial support. The second proprietary application on this list, and also a paid option, also appears to be written to be a full replacement for Adobe Acrobat Pro, like Master. It is also a mature application with commercial support.The Pro version has all the features that Adobe Acrobat Pro and Master have as far as I can see. It opened the test documents just as flawlessly as Master PDF Editor did.
This is also a quality product and will probably suit you well if you decide to buy it. PDF ChainThis list would not be complete without mentioning the pdftk tool and the best Linux graphical frontend for it. This is a simple but powerful application, but it is not a full-blown graphical editor as the other applications listed here – its usefulness lies elsewhere. It can split a PDF into smaller documents, or merge two into one.
![Pdf compare tool open source Pdf compare tool open source](/uploads/1/2/7/3/127369988/207668406.jpg)
It can add backgrounds, stamps, or edit the PDF info, or dump the form data in a PDF, among the many things it can do.All in all, a really great application if you don’t want to edit the text or images in a PDF. I highly recommend it. ConclusionSo, which is one of these applications better than the others? Well, I suppose it depends on what you want to do. Do you just want to edit a word or image in a PDF that someone created in Microsoft Word? You will probably do great with LibreOffice Draw or Inkscape.
Do you want to use something similar to Adobe Acrobat Pro, and be able to fully edit almost all PDF’s in any way you want? You might have to buy a Master or PDF Studio 11. Do you want to merge two PDF documents in one? You should try PDF Chain (or pdftk if you prefer the command line).These are all in their own right good PDF editors – you just need to choose which one will suit you best. If it doesn’t work for you, try another!
Try with the plugin. Both are completely free. No strings attached.A couple of the comments below suggest they don't see any difference. That means the plug-in isn't installed correctly. Here's how:.Put the files where the xdocdiff plugin's readme file says to put them (there are two places; I won't list them here as filenames can change, etc. — read the readme).In WinMerge, go to Plugins List and tick the 'Enable Plugins' checkbox (this step is missing from the xdocdiff readme).In WinMerge, choose Plugins Automatic Unpacking (this was disabled prior to step 2)Then when comparing, you'll see what look like text files in the comparison windows.
![](/uploads/1/2/7/3/127369988/801144180.jpg)