V9 PDF-XChange Editor/Editor PlusWe at Tracker Software Products/PDF-XChange Co. are excited to announce the release of Version 9 of the PDF-XChange product line on January 14th, 2021. A range of new features, improvements and bug fixes have been added in this major release of our products. Whether you are a home user or small business looking for an easy-to-use, affordable PDF editor, or a mid-sized to global business looking for an intelligent, robust PDF solution to streamline productivity and automate workflow - there has never been a better time to harness the power of the PDF-XChange family of products:
V9 PDF-XChange Editor/Editor PlusThere are many new features and additions, speed improvements and new support of the ARM chipset for most Windows-based hardware in the new release. Two new features in particular deserve special attention:
1: Accessibility - We have added new formatting and functionality options for those with visual impairments and other disabilities. This new functionality conforms to several international standards and governmental requirements, which are addressed comprehensively in the V9 release. We will continue to extend and fine our Accessibility features in future builds.
The PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility) ISO standard is designed to make the viewing and editing of documents easier for users who are visually impaired or otherwise disabled. PDF-XChange Editor is now able to perform an Accessibility Check in order to ensure that documents meet the requirements for this ISO standard. Additionally, the Order and Tags panes have been added to the software in order to meet PDF/UA requirements. Accessibility compliance improvements have also been made, and UI Automation is now available.
Corresponding VPAT documentation will be available in the coming weeks.
2: New and Updated Enhanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Plugin – in version 8.0.333.0 (released April 4th, 2019) we added the optional 'Enhanced OCR' plugin for users who needed to convert image-based content into editable text - and wanted to avail of better quality and more dynamic OCR functionality in comparison to that offered by the free, default OCR functionality included in our FREE software. We initially selected the Leadtools OCR SDK and language sets in order to create the Enhanced OCR plugin, and for many users it performed very well. However, With a limitation of approximately 50 different language packs and restrictions and limitations with some non-English Languages, it was found to be of limited value to a significant proportion of our client base.
Therefore, in Version 9 we decided to replace the LeadTools OCR SDK with the industry-leading OCR library from ABBYY Software. The new OCR recognition is greatly improved and displays a significantly higher level of accuracy for many document types and language sets. Users from eastern Europe and elsewhere who had experienced issues with OCR on Cyrillic text will see significant improvements. Additionally, ABBYY’s OCR SDK extends the number of languages supported from less than 50 to over 150, including ‘RTL’ (right-to-left reading) languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.
Please note that the existing model of purchasing the Enhanced OCR functionality as an optional plugin will cease on release of version 9, and this plugin will no longer be available as a separate item in PDF-XChange Editor or PDF-Tools. The new Enhanced OCR feature set will instead be included in PDF-XChange Editor Plus and the PDF-XChange Pro bundle. Customers with active product maintenance who purchased the V8 Enhanced OCR plugin will receive a free upgrade to the either the V9 Editor Plus or V9 PRO bundle, in order to ensure they have continued access to the features that were available to them before the V9 release.
Please refer to these Knowledgebase articles for more details on free upgrades from V8 product licenses that include the EOCR Plugin to V9 products that include the Improved ECOR feature set and how to Activate your V9 license:
New Licensing Implemented in V9: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowledgebase/553
Activate my License keys in V9: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowledgebase/554
A range of additional features to those listed above have been added to PDF-XChange Editor/Editor Plus for the V9 release.
These include:
A range of features have also been improved and enhanced for the V9 release. The Split Pages dialog box can now display deltas from both top and bottom, and several lines can be selected and removed at the same time. Additionally, a new ‘Split Every x Points’ command is available, which enables more dynamic splitting options, and it is now also possible to split pages by guide lines. The Watermarks features have also been updated – now you can specify when watermarks are visible: during View, Print and/or Export, and new macros have been made available. Dialog box functionality has also been enhanced in the Markdown to PDF and Export to Word/Excel/PowerPoint features.
A selection of new options are available in the Layers pane, including the ability to Import as Layer, Move Content and Annotations to layers, Specify Default layers, Drag and Drop content and annotations to the Layers Pane, Show/Hide/Toggle selected layers, Sort Layers alphabetically, Extract selected/visible layers and Flatten selected layers/all optional content. File and Destination controls have been updated in several dialog boxes, and the Export to Office options have been enhanced. The process of Editing Text also has some new features - it is now possible to retain the original text layout when editing document text, and list-creation is supported in both comments and page content. Numerous additional bug fixes and improvements have also been made to the software. A complete list of those is available here:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor/history
Other Improvements
Further improvements to the software include ARM Chipset support, which is now available in PDF-XChange Editor via the ARM-Specific Product Installer, as well as enhancements to PostScript printer support. Multi-Threaded Processing and Memory Management of PDF-XChange Editor, which significantly increases the speed and performance of the software.
V9 PDF-ToolsFour new tools (and associated actions) have been added to PDF-Tools in the V9 release:
The 'Import as Layer Overlay' tool/action, which overlays a destination PDF document with a selected source PDF document.
Several existing features in PDF-Tools have been enhanced and improved for the V9 release. These include the new ’Find by Regular Expression’ and ‘Preserve Original Timestamp for file’ options in the ‘Save Documents’ action, and the ‘Append Existing Document’ option as an overwrite action in the ‘Save Documents’ and ‘Change Document Properties’ actions. New group policy options have been added to the PDF-Tools administrative template, and there are a range of additional improvements and bug fixes that have been made in the software, as detailed here:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-tools/history
Image extraction has also been improved in this version of PDF-Tools, and ARM Chipset is now supported via the ARM-specific installer.
V9 PDF-XChange Standard/Lite PrinterProcess Streamlining and Memory Management have been significantly improved in both the V9 PDF-XChange Standard and Lite virtual printers, and these changes have greatly enhanced their conversion performance. We’ve also added Outlook Meetings conversion support to the Outlook Addin, which is included with the PDF-XChange Standard license. Link generation for MS Word footnotes and endnotes has been fixed for V9, and a range of additional fixes have also been made, as detailed here:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-xchange-standard/history We hope you enjoy and make good use of the new features in the software, and thank you for your continued support of our products and our company. If you have any questions about the new features, or any other queries in general, please contact support@pdf-xchange.com and we will be happy to assist you.
Best regards,
The Tracker Software Products/PDF-XChange Co team