I recently needed to do a simple find-and-replace to remove a specific text string in a large PDF document (1000+ pages, with a mix of graphics and text) and evaluated every major PDF editor on the market (including Adobe Acrobat Pro XI). To my astonishment, this seemingly trivial task turned out to be far from simple to accomplish properly – the only app that was able to do this satisfactorily was Infix. All the others either:
a) failed to do the find and replace or
b) rendered the text surrounding the removed string illegible
c) made the file grow to 3x its original size or
d) crashed due to the size of the document
I have learned from this experience that editing PDF files is not as easy as it might seem due to the complex internal make-up of them and that most PDF editors out there fails to make PDF editing a smooth and seamless experience for the user. The ultimate PDF editor would handle the internal complexity of a PDF document automatically “under the hood”, so that the end user can focus on getting the job done without having to wrestle with the internal structure of the PDF. Infix is the only editor out there that accomplishes this that I am aware of.
– Larse Oberg