PDF experts say the $99 application trails Adobe's product in capabilities for accessibility and commercial printing.Software developer ARTS PDF last week announced Nitro PDF Desktop, a PDF creation and editing tool that gives users full PDF control features including commenting, form-filling and authoring, digital signatures and text editing.
The tool, announced at the recent Adobe Acrobat & PDF Conference, gives users a wide range of PDF functionality at a lower cost than Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat, according to ARTS PDF.
"Very few people or organizations have been able to realize the full potential of PDF due to the cost of PDF software," said Sam Chandler, chief operating officer at Pleasanton, Calif.-based ARTS PDF, which is a subsidiary of BinaryThing Pty. Ltd. "Until now, there has been no product with the full PDF production features of Acrobat, including editing and manipulation tools, available. This release represents a true alternative to Acrobat.
"You can't have a real collaborative effort unless the tool is available to everyone in your organization," Chandler said. "If just a few people at the uppermost level have the full functionality of the PDF tool, then the rest in essence are essentially 'viewers,' not collaborators. This product changes that by making it affordable for everyone to collaborate. We plan on being very competitive in the licensing model for this release."
Click here to read more about ARTS PDF's new Aerialist Professional.
Nitro PDF is roughly one-third the cost of Adobe Acrobat. Carl Young, a noted author, trainer and organizer of the PDF conference, said that while the solution presents a significant PDF creation option, it does not address accessibility at the same level that Acrobat does.
"The main differentiator between Adobe and the ARTS PDF tool is in the accessibility, which might hinder the sales to the government sector. In the case of accessibility, one of the things Nitro PDF lacks is the ability to create a tagged PDF, which identifies the reading order for documents for blind users utilizing screen-reading software," Young said.
Tagged PDF files are important because tags make the PDF file compliant with Section 508 of the Citizens with Disabilities Act.
Ted Padova, author of "The Adobe Acrobat PDF Bible," said Acrobat also has commercial printing features that Nitro PDF does not. For serious PDF users, Padova said, the products would work well running in tandem with Acrobat, and he thinks ARTS PDF should incorporate its popular ARTS PDF plug-ins with the release in the future.
For his part, ARTS PDF's Chandler said Nitro PDF won't ship in May with the existing ARTS PDF plug-ins, but the company's development team will be addressing feedback and demand from users in regard to what they want in Nitro PDF for future releases.
"Our ARTS PDF plug-ins take Acrobat further. Obviously we'd like to see Nitro taken to the next level, too. We certainly intend to be aggressive with our release cycle and with the evolution of the product."
Adobe Systems officials were not available for comment on the release.
Full commercial release of ARTS PDF will ship May 2 for $99. Volume licensing information is available at the product Web site.
