Slashdot Mirror
Adobe Acrobat Toolbar Worse than Malware?
Phr3n3tik writes "Adobe Acrobat has long included a toolbar plugin to automate PDF Making from Office Products. Those who found the toolbar an eyesore, or just used it infrequently could always hide it from view. Not so in their new versions, (6, and 7 apparently.) Their new take on the PDFMaker toolbar is getting some users riled up, since it is harder to Move/Hide/Delete/Uninstall this new toolbar than many forms of malware!"
smells like it..
IT IS!
And to think you paid $600 for a piece of malware.
Don't install it if you don't want it? I don't think you need to add the toolbar.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
... Between legit software and malware? You don't want the toolbar, it's hard to get rid of the toolbar, it's an eyesore that you never use and don't remember asking for. Sounds like 'XXX Teen Search Buddy' to me!
Because, at least in my mind, Adobe is a respectable software company. One that should not stoop so low as to be compared to common malware.
Unplug all controller for great reset!!
I haven't used Acrobat 4 for quite a long time. However I cannot find a way to remove the PDF toolbar even after I have removed the software completely from my machine.
It is dangerous to be right on a subject on which the established authorities are wrong. - Voltaire
I'm trying to stick with 5 since it works and the other versions are getting too feature rich.
A Brit in Tallahassee.
I mean geez I try not to bitch about the dupes and crappy stories that get posted here, but man is this a non-story.
t or/
btw a good free pdf creatore for windows.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcrea
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Sure, I'll take one. Can you mail him to me at work?
By asking whether or not it is worse than malware, you are implying it is harmful. However, in the very end, you suggest that it is only worse in the sense that you can't get rid of it. That is very misleading.
A blog like any other.
I can remove the toolbar (Acobat Pro 6) from all the office products I just tried (only word and excel). The first link in this story is something about Visio, which is an add-on to office i think. I don't have that product, so I can't say. The other post is for office for mac osX, so I can't say there either. But the problem doesn't seem to be as big as the write-up suggests, surprised?
Instructions
Worked for me!
My userid is prime!
Why not just add a printer selection option like PDFCreator or any other pdf writer. It's pathetic to have toolbar, the only reason is for advertisement.
One of the nicest features of OS X is the ability to turn just about any darn thing into a PDF. Rather than spend the money on this just go out and buy a Mac. Of course you can't turn this feature off in OS X, so maybe my OS is malware too.
How can you tell in the MS office suite? The whole thing's got so many sliding panels, animated dogs saying "it looks like you're trying to get some work done." and other crap too numerous to list... I can't imagine one more toolbar being noticable.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Adobe toolbar, what's that? I just hit "Save to PDF" on any print dialogs...
I refuse to use anything newer than version 5 of Acrobat. They completely and totally fucked up the product after this release.
On the other hand, it really shouldn't be this difficult to remove valid programs - MS should really step in here and mandate a total-removal tool. Something that wipes ALL THE BLOODY FILES and icons from the HDD.
Of course, unless its IE, MS has never really believed in standards for the good of the end user - just for the good of the bottom line (WMA anyone???)
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Isn't it as simple as right-clicking the toolbar area and unchecking PDFmaker? I did this in about 2 seconds and it's gone.
... Adobe has taken the Real approach to software.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I've seen slow news days before on Slashdot but....wow.
Native to the application, simple, and intuitive. That's what happens when users and geeks design the application instead of the marketing wonks.
It must be hiding in the registry, I guess.
.... is Norton Internet Security.
That is THE worst malware to date.
- It preys on people's ignorant paranoia
- It succeeds in taking money from people (most malware fails at this)
- It blocks websites, services, and causes the computer to slow WAY down
- It is poorly written and buggy as hell. (how many times have you seen "please reinstall NIS"?
- When you turn it off it says it's off but stays on, when you disable it says it's disabled but it's still enabled, and worst yet it requires registry hacking to remove it without b0rking your networking capabilities.
- Customers calling Symantec with any support issues are directed towards their ISP for help.
fux0r Symantec.
do() || do_not();
We have licenses for 7.0 standard, but I've uninstalled and gone back to just reader. But I had to do a complete reinstall to get rid of entirely. (didn't hurt that I have a new laptop so... heh)
Good news though: Reader does not do the plugin stuff, nor does it do it on my Solaris workstation.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Our world today is based upon a Capitalistic Imerialistic aided in with militaristic type mind set where profits rule above basic human needs. if the usa gov can do it why not adobe?
I guess the best way to avoid this is to not install MS Office and use OpenOffice instead :-)
Its annoying in Word 2004 for Mac.. always there in the toolbar. Also, its shit becuase if you've got Acrobat 7 installed, any pdf's you view in Safari have to open Acrobat first, no matter how many times you tell it to 'always open with preview'. Bugger.
Yes, it is so respectable to take postscript and fuck it up and rename it and close it off so you're in charge.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Or maybe it was a mistake to allow Microsoft to get away with that?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Adobe seems to have partnered with Yahoo! to get Adobe Reader users to install the Yahoo! toolbar. When you go to adobe.com to download Adobe Reader, they try to bundle a lot of other junk with it as well (Yahoo! toolbar, Adobe Download Manager, etc.) It's getting really annoying.
I hate the way Acrobat loads in my browser window when I click a link to a PDF file, instead of simply opening Acrobat outside of my browser window. I end up with half the screen taken up by toolbars. It's ridiculous.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
www.oldversion.com
seriously, there is no reason to use any version past acrobat 4.
Adobe is clearly filling a market need with their product. As pioneers they can, of course, charge premium rates for their commercial-grade Malware. They have to recoup the costs of conducting psychological studies on the most brain-corroding toolbar scheme imaginable. These things cost money, you know. It is wholly unreasonable to ask Adobe to develop such brain-mangling software and shoulder the research costs involved.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Does this mean that even uninstalling Acrobat itself won't remove the said toolbar?
If does, then I understand whining about it. Not otherwise.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
This article is ridiculous. I've been a user of (BUY ADOBE ACROBAT!!!!) Adobe's toolbar and I have never seen any (BUY ADOBE ACROBAT!!!!) evidence of being infected with any sort of adware (BUY ADOBE ACROBAT!!!!) or malware.
I'm a big tall mofo.
True, not being able to get rid of a simple toolbar is not exactly malware-worthy.
But let's face it, not being able to customize your own personal environment can be pretty frustrating.
Imagine having a stack of papers on your desk that could never be removed, no matter what you did. Dang man. That'd drive me nuts!
BTW, this discussion of permanent toolbars kind of reminds me of the invasive qualities of AOL. Ever try to get that junk off your PC? It's worse than a virus!
http://augustwestproducts.i8.com
Geez, the first link from the article is to a visio problem that really is only obliquely related to Acrobat. The second does make reference to problems in disabling the Toolbar.
But to call this malware is really rather much. Can't posters and editors make a little more effort to do more than whine?
Three Squirrels
On OS-X, at least, it installs itself automatically when doing an Acrobat Reader installation. I had to manually uninstall it from the Internet Plug-ins folder in order to use the significantly faster Schubert PDF Browser Plugin .
i thought, therefore i was...
We hae Adobe Element 6 installed on our stanard build, and so when we upgraded tot he new office 2003, there were a lot of issues surrouning the PdfMaker plugin... Not a fun week... seems that the people that had Acrobat pro 6 though, didn't have any trouble with it... very strange..
lol. OpenOffice also can export to PDF without Acrobat present.. I'm sure most people don't know that, else why do they buy Acrobat?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Perhaps that's because, for obvious security reasons, I deactivated macros in MS word?
coherency learn it, and some people might pause to read your opinion.
I wouldn't mess with it anyway. You can use Ghostscript. And you can used the modified primo pdf from active pdf. it's a free PDF creator.
http://www.primopdf.com
works great. one time it will ask you for personal info after you make like 25 pdfs, but you can just push the cancel button if you don't want to give them any statistical information. It appears as a printer on your computer. I use it, it's great.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
Rather than pay $100 for acrobat on your $900 computer spend $2000 on a mac and do it for free. That is a good idea.
;)
To be fair, the Mac Mini doesn't even come close to $2000. Still more expensive than Acrobat though.
Search your hard drive for "PDFMaker.dot" or probably anything else withe PDFMaker in the name. On my machine it installs it here:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\STARTUP
That will get rid of it in all your Office apps including Outlook.
Well, what's the difference between using a tool like Adobe Acrobat and printing to a PostScript file and converting that *.ps file into a PDF document? Unless you need features such as links between the documents, for many uses, the PostScript -> PDF route is a much easier route. Besides, there are plenty of alternatives to converting Office files directly to PDFs, too, and I bet you that some of them have some of those extra capabilities that PDFs provide, too.
Well, it doesn't really solve the toolbar problem, but if the toolbar is that annoying, there are plenty of alternatives to Acrobat.
Print > save as PDF. Saves $800 in the process.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
You need to select print to save? That's intuitive... err, I think.
just to read a 100kb pdf
goddammit, does slashdot code not know what a hard return is? one more time, for the stupid code.
coherency
learn it, and some people might pause to read your opinion.
Uncheck this:
Edit>Preferences>Startup>Show Messages and automatically update
The banner goes away, and, as a bonus, if you have auto-update disabled, the stupid app stops tickling the network too.
C'mon gentlemen, this is not worth a slashdot article. Next time start your engines before flooring the pedal.
[Thanks guys, I always wanted to do that.]
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
What is wrong with complying to "uninstall" standards? Or better yet have a checkbox when it runs that tells it to scram or to never pop-up or run again?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
of which you speak???
20721
Quit posting stupid tech questions claiming they are newsworthy. Just remove the pdfmaker.dot template to get rid of the Office toolbar. Sheesh.
Read it, learn it, live it.
"There's more to Acrobat than Reader!"
If you don't want it, don't install the things. It's not that hard of a choice. And it's an MSI based install so you can easily jump in and remove the features you don't want.
I'm working on getting v7 ready for deployment in my company so I'm looking into it right now, but honestly...it's not that hard of a thing to do!
File->Export as PDF... :)
I still have Acrobat 3 (all 5.6 megs of it) on my Windows partition. It could probably be traced back all the way to my first Win95 machine; I simply copied it over every hardware upgrade.
The default installation adds the Acrobat Toolbar to Word. REconfiguring it's position, or unselecting it in the toolbar settins is only good for the current session. If you close Word and open it back up, BAM! There is is, right back where it started. It's just plain annoying.
You right click on the toolbar and click on PDF Maker 7.0 and it's hidden. What you should be more upset with is that Adobe Acrobat PDF stuff doesn't work with Office 2003 in many instances, you have to buy Acrobat 7 just to get the functionality they should release a patch for. The point of this article is making a mountain out of a mole hill though.
I am not saying what adobe is doing is right thing to do all I am pointing out too is a direct link between USA Gov. and mindset in with our corporate wolrd operates under.
What has happened to the PDF concept? Back in 1997-98, I used Acrobat on Windows, Mac, Solaris and HP-UX without any problems. I embraced it as an almost universal format with good layout retention and presentation. Since then it's all gone down hill. Back then, Acrobat reader was 3 or 5 MB? And now its a >20MB download (bigger?). Just to read a PDF file?
... I used Acrobat 5 but forced to also install Acrobat 6 reader, and that combo still gives some nuisances. Forget about Linux for the moment.
And so much for interoperability, I receive countless warnings saying I have some feauture that is incompatible or I cannot view some part of the file, etc. etc.
PDF really sucks. I understand most organizations use it for FORMs but I truly think a better open format needs to come into play.
For those that don't know... it's a windows printer driver that makes PDFs of your document when you print to it... very handy.
Next on Slashdot, how to remove the MSNMessenger icon from your system tray!
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Interesting?!?
I've never seen anything more over-rated - it was trolling to start with...
i have versions 6 and 7 on different computers in my office and have no trouble hiding the toolbars.
simple directions follow:
1) right click anywhere on the button bar
2) click on "Add remove buttons"
3) Clear the check mark next to PDFMaker x.0 (where x is your version of Acrobat Pro)
Thats it... it doesnt reappear unless you reverse the process.
Just because its not userfriendly doesnt mean its malware...
If the Adobe toolbar is uninstalled, the terrorists will have won.
Adobe is a company that just doesn't care that its products fail to adhere to common WIndows GUI guidelines *. I doubt they care about this. One example is their brain-dead "Save A Copy" function. That's just not "Windows", and what it does could have been handled with "Save As". Maybe it's Mac-like and they're trying to retain cross-platform look-and-feel but it just doesn't "feel" like WIndows and that goes for Acrobat, Photoshop, Premiere, etc. When it comes to the user interface they don't care so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to "fix" something they don't feel is broken.
* other offenders: Macromedia, Autodesk products. You realy notice when a program requires your UI neural pathways to shift gears.
So would you say that Acrobat makes you jump through hoops or bend over backwards to uninstall their toolbar? Ahem.. yes, its a very bad joke.
No problem with PDF creator (search sourceforge for it). It's not as seamless as OSX, but gives print-to-PDF functionality to anything that can print in Windows (not just MS Office).
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
I need to make a PDF so infrequently I can just use the online conversion tool. You get 5 free conversions. I only need it once in a blue moon so I have 2 free conversions left. Works great.
Perhaps OT, but does anyone know of a decent open-source Adobe Acrobat Reader alternative on Windows? The current version is bloated beyond hell, and I simply cannot believe reading PDFs should require that much bloat. Thanks!
The fact that noone bothers to read software manuals anymore .
It clearly states in the manuel that you can stop it starting with word by removing its entry from the word startup files folder.
Its only hard if you dont RTFM
Simple fix:
t ml
Just install the minimum version of Reader, and not the Full version.
Go here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.h
Choose your OS and connection speed, and then DESELECT the checkbox next to "Download the full version of Adobe Reader..."
The "Minimum" install allows you to read PDF files just fine.
You probably also want to deselect the other two checkboxes, unless you want more crap to get installed...
I forgot to mention the OpenOffice.org has been creating PDFs for a few years now. The new 2.0 beta has a lot more options for image compression and a bit better MSWord import too, so your table formatting is more likely to look good upon import.
exports right to PDF. Of course you always have to worry that one day OpenOffice.org just might not be there anymore. Cause you know that "open source" software isn't reliable, stable, or in the end secure. right.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
Adobe's PDF reader sure sucks, that is for sure. By default, it brings up PFD pages on the Web with the fonts in a microscopic size smaller than "font size = 1" on regular HTML. So, the first thing I have to do is bang on the "+" enlarge icon a bunch of times, while waiting for the slow screens to update in a watery- washy fashion. Then I can read the PDF. HTML is so much faster, so much friendler, and so much easier to read. It is rare that I find an HTML page that can't be read just as it appears. You don't need a 20 meg bag on the browser with annoying "there is a new version!" nag messages just to read HTML.
PDF on the Internet is an annoyance to be worked around. The "read as HTML" feature of Google sure is great.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Since the second link is down: http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/dc606edf5dd2111cf fb4c2925123d784/index.html
--
Want a free iPod?
Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof
we should all boycot adobe now? think this trough a little. the problem lies with in the corporate elite
drive for profit which is clearly inpowered by the USA Govt's drive for profit. If USA can do what ever the profits call for why not adobe. if you ask me we should not be beheading adobe but the sys in witch this kind of business practice can sustain.
I didn't even know there was a toolbar (well, yes I did -- I saw it mentioned in the license when I installed Acro7).
That definition is out of date, for sure. It excludes a large percentage of the malware that spybot, Adaware, etc are designed to filter.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Actually, according to netcraft, the military runs IIS 5 on Linux:
. mi l
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.af
smee
Hijack This will let you remove this and any other toolbar quite easily, though it is a bit cryptic to use.
m l
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.ht
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Any body know why I need the qttask.exe
running all the time? Ive turned off the taskbar
function and sadly every time I view a QT video
it puts its RunOnce entry back in the registery.
Haji! Seeing you long time for not was I!!!
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/328399.html
For Mac:
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/329307.html
Annoying, but at least they show you how to get around the reappear/reinstall/undeletable garbage the toolbar usually subjects you to.
... then it's malware. Period.
Also why I don't use symantec products- one too many command line hunt-and-kills for my liking.
Apple-P -> Save as PDF :)
It's amazing how many Joe Average Users don't seem to grok a statement like "my OS can turn anything into a PDF".
.DOC.
At my old college, I used to use the school's writing lab to print any papers I needed for class, since I don't do enough printing to be worth keeping my old inkjet fed with ink. However, I'm also using a G4 tower with no CD burner, and I've not had any real need for removable media since I can always transfer anything I want over the internet; put it on my webspace and download from wherever.
However, in the lab at school, there was a "no printing off the internet" policy. Nothing technical to enforce it, just a rule for the staff; the print queue from the lab computers is monitored by some staff person and each job is has to be approved before it will print. So often times I'd be standing there at the printing waiting for my job to come out and the Print Queue Nazi and I would have a conversation like this:
"Are you waiting for your job to print?"
"Yeah."
"What's the file called?"
"Philosophy Final."
"Did you get this off the internet?"
"Technically, but I put it there. Why?"
"There's no printing off the internet allowed."
"I didn't download this from some website. That's my homework. That's my final due in 15 minutes. I made that, uploaded it to my space, and downloaded it here to print."
"Why didn't you just upload a Word file?"
"Cause I didn't use Word."
"Then how did you write that?"
I then have to proceed to explain that there are other word processors besides Word, which they don't have and thus couldn't read my file, but that my OS can turn anything I want into a PDF that can be read just about anywhere, and that yes, in fact, some of us mere mortals DO have their own presence on the internet and I can put damn well whatever I please up there and grab it from anywhere I need! If it's so hard for him to grok I could go nextdoor to the CS lab, download it there, burn a CD, bring THAT back in here to print off of and he'll still bitch at me cause it's a PDF and not a
Thankfully at this point there's usually a line of people waiting for their print jobs and the trained staff monkey will just print my paper for me anyway.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
What the frack is the MS "Journal Reader" and how do I murder it? I can't read PDF files any more after an autoinstall that has more lives than the god-damned mummy
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
"By Grapthar's Hammer, avenged you shall be!"
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
the air force is only part of the military. Not the whole military. Go to http://www.army.mil to see what I mean.
This software is similar to my previous post:
a sp
another free replacement for your toolbar.
http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/Writer.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
I've heard about "OMFG OS X PEE DEE EFF!!!!!11111" for years. YEARS I SAY.
I print tiffs from photoshop. I'm not really a document kind of guy. I've run off some ebay invoices from textedit a couple of times, but that's been it. I've never dicked with pdfs in OS X.
So just for the heck of it, I hit Apple-P (PRINT) in Safari on this article. Got a list of shared printers three floors above my head, and options to [ PREVIEW ] [ SAVE AS PDF ] and [ FAX ]*. Saved off the article as an 11 page pdf and opened it up in Preview for a skim. Smooth.
PDFing in OS X is a completely transparent process- it's an option in the print menu, which is in turn present in damned near every application under the "File" menu. None of this obnoxious "Office Toolbar" crap.
* I imagine FAX capability would be damned handy for some people.
Adobe toolbar, what's that? I just hit "Save to PDF" on any print dialogs...
Would that be with the right or left mouse button?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Actually, have you seen the latest Acrobat Pro? For $450 (US) you get a buggy application with a horrible interface. The application barely lets you edit PDF files. I created a form earlier, when loaded into v7, it forced me to use their new Designer application that completely changed the format, screwed up all the fonts and doubled the size of the PDF (neither were compressed.) Now document conversion fails with a crypic and uninformative error message about the printer getting an error (i.e. their PDF driver). Fun from Adobe! They need competition.
I don't know, but it works for me.
(posting anonymously to save my ass)
This article is 100% bullshit.
If you actually search the support documents, you can find instructions for removing PDFMaker. Or, if you're doing a first-time installation, you can just do a custom installation and *gasp* tell it not to install PDFMaker to begin with!
What made version 6.0 and 7.0 annoying is the "self-heal" feature that would put the PDFMaker files back after you deleted them. However, if you use the custom install approach, the self-heal will not put PDFmaker back.
Trivia: I personally have spoken with people who either want PDFMaker gone or want it back. The latter grossly outnumber the former.
If you guys didn't know, Adobe released its Reader v7.0 for Linux/Unix recently:
0 /e nu/
ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/7x/7.
I don't think this port has the toolbar though. I don't remember and cannot check from work.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
First you need to distribute the 20MB+ Adobe Reader...
.MST file that you apply to the Adobe MSI...
Then you find out that Adobe uses a custom installer that doesn't accept command line arguements to modify various installation parameters.
So instead, you need to download a 150MB Installshield tweak tool to disable ad banners, the Yahoo search bar, etc. That generates a
Its an absolutely horrible program... but management types get suckered in by the new "advanced" features.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Bad taste to follow up to one's own post, and getting off the topic of PDFs, but it might be interesting to note for anyone who likes to send files to themselves over the net as I do:
" , with no index.html in there) or direct links to PDFs (possibly other files) not referred from an HTML page (like typing "http://www.localisp.com/~someuser/transferfiles/m ypaper.pdf" directly into the address bar). So my usual strategy of sending things to myself through my own webspace doesn't work if I want to print something from a Kinkos.
Apparently Kinkos computer policy is to universally ban any directory listings (like "http://www.localisp.com/~someuser/transferfiles/
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Old & busted: programs that had Windows systray icons you couldn't turn off, nor did you need
New hotness: programs that have a web browser toolbar you can't uninstall.
I just bought a new DVD burner and installed the Roxio DVD burning software that came with it. Roxio installs a program called Drag To Disk to allow treating a CD/RW or DVD/RW as a regular drive. This is kind of cool, but it runs at startup. I wanted to disable it from running at startup. It is not in the Startup folder. It is not in the registry in any of the following locations: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\RunOnce
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\RunOnce
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\ RunServices
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\ RunServicesOnce
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\ RunOnce\Setup
It is not in the Services.
I have no idea what is starting it up. So I decided to rename the executable.
When I used File Explorer to add a new folder, Roxio's installation program runs, and copies Drag To Disk back onto my drive. wtf.
Drag To Disk cannot be uninstalled either. I would need to uninstall the entire Roxio product.
I also cannot terminate the process from Task Manager as it states that I don't have the proper permission. Even though I am the admistrator. F**ing windows.
Fortunately there is a task bar icon that lets me terminate the program.
Of course I don't need it so much now that I've switched to OpenOffice anyway.
There are several free (as in beer) or very cheap add-ons to Windows that will install a virtual printer driver to make PDFS. These work with any Windows app, not just MS OFfice. OO.org also has excellent PDF-creation functions, and understands the Office formats very well.
The thing you need Acrobat (or a similar program) for is editing existing PDFs. That's a much harder capability to implement, but it doesn't involve Office at all (unless you don't have Acrobat and need to use a workaround, like turning the PDF into a giant GIF and pasting text boxes over it).
I just installed Acrobat 2 minutes ago, and deselected the checkbox for installing the toolbar.
May last XP install was brought down by software bloat. You won't get me this time you evil minons of software bloat!
Ummm, Adobe invented postscript. I think that gives them the right to do whatever the fuck they want with it.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Acrobat is used extensively in commercial prepress print publishing workflows that use PostScript.
That's essentially every newspaper and magazine with a circulation of 40,000 and up.
And most of those publications use Macs for the final pagination & printing, yet still purchase Acrobat for the fine-tuning features of Distiller.
Also, Acrobat allows you to set document security attributes that OpenOffice.org's "Export to PDF" and Mac OS X's native "Save as PDF" don't support.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Not open source, but you can get old Adobe Acrobats here.
If you have any trouble with this bar the thing to do (Worked for me on Adobe Acrob at 6.0 for Mac) is:or where ever else you installe Office there are three subfolderst there.each directory contains a file name Delete those files and you are rid of the damn toolbar. The only problem is that the next time you start Adobe Acrobat you get a nag screen stating that Acrobat needs to make repairs. No matter how I try to opt out of the damn repair Acrobat still re-creates those files. Just for kicks I tried to refuse Acrobat write permission to those three directories but it just refused to start which I thought was rather funny. After that I deleted the damn thing (aka Adobe Acrobat Professional) and have yet to regret it.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
OS X's built-in PDF maker sucks. It doesn't do any optimization at all, so anything with graphics turns out huge.
For full control of *all* PDF settings, it's best to make a postscript file and then use Distiller to crank out a PDF. It's not a free solution, but it's the best thing out there.
Transistors and Beer!!
I would either,
a: consider it a gift, copyright and license has just gone out the window.
b: Phone them up and say you'll be charging them rental of the HDD, memory and CPU space/time it is taking up at $100 a day until they send an engineer round to remove it from you system.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Recent versions of Acrobat reader and writer which have come with other Adobe products and which I use for testing are really annoying. They hook into Word. They hook into Safari. They integrate with numerous apps by adding buttons and toolbars. It is really bothersome. On OS X, why do I need an extra button in Word That tries to sell me Acrobat Writer. It's not like Word on OS X can't already make PDFs. Also, Acrobat reader is much slower than Preview and grinds the browser to a halt while trying to open PDFs inline. That is half the reason PDFs suck so badly on Windows. Worse yet, recent version of reader on OS X silently fail to open some PDFs. Adobe needs to get their act together.
PostScript was invented by Adobe. They were in charge before. PDF is a superset of PostScript.
Are you talking about PDF? You do realize its an open spec format right?
Its also what OSX uses for rendering the desktop.
ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/7x/7.0/e nu/ for a clickable link! :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet.
pdf995
Been using it for years.
Only "cost" is a popup ad when you print to PDF.
This is OT, but does anyone know a good (free) way to edit and save PDF forms (in Windows)? For instance, many tax forms can be filled out through Acroread, but Acroread provides no way to save the data you entered, which is really annoying. I searched for free solutions, and came up with nothing. The best I found is 'CutePDF Form Filler' which does what I want, but I need this functionality so infrequently, I'm not keen on paying for it (there is an evaluation edition, which I have used successfully, but it adds a blurb to the bottom of the page)
Ever try to run a lower version of the full copy of Acrobat alongside a newer version of the reader? In your web browser, the older version of the plugin will always be loaded, no matter how many times you reinstall the newer version of the reader. That and the whole problems with the button(s) on the MS Word toolbar have dramatically lowered my opinion of Adobe Acrobat.
"The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right." - Henrik Ibsen
This is a symptom of the overall personality of the Adobe software. You install it on your machine and it throws it's weight around like an 800 lb gorilla. It's disgusting the number of files folders and registry keys it creates. You'd think the the sole purpose in life of your computer was to be the home of this software. At least Adobe seems to think so. Well, being that pdf is an open standard format, there are many many free implementations of readers, editors, converters etc. out there. For plain old viewing of pdfs I use and recommend Foxit pdfReader: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php It's very handy, fast, and not bloated. I for one will never let adobe get its meat hooks into my computer again.
problem solved.
Prior to Acrobat 6, if you said not to install PDFMaker, it didn't. Starting with 6, it does it anyway. However, we've found that simply deleting the templates placed in the Office startup folders is enough to remove the integration and toolbars.
The program installs things you specifically exclude. That is bad. The effect on end users is somewhere between confusing and aggravating. But at a support level, we've had very good luck removing the templates before creating workstation images, and we've been able to mostly avoid the problems as a result.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
Acrobat's toolbar will reset the toolbar settings for some of the Office Apps, like Visio.
So, it does harm the computing environment I have set up and it deletes it irreparably. It resets the toolbar each and every time it is run. So, re-customizing the toolbar is useless.
I can not just delete the Visio/Acrobat template file as Visio will give me an error message that the plug-in is not found. The solution, uninstall Visio and reinstall.
Furthermore, each of the Office Apps interact with the toolbar in its own special way. In Outlook it is a registry edit. In Word a template that can be deleted (IIRC). And, in Visio, a template that cannot be deleted.
Use OpenOffice's 'save to PDF' function.
I do.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I find PDFcreator (open source) works just as good. The only downside is that is that you cant combine exsisting PDF's
/. geeks are of course running the latest linux, OSX, or windoze on a massively powerful box.
By contrast, Ma and Pa Kettle are running windows 98 on a Pentium 133 with 64 MB of RAM.
When Ma and Pa trustingly click on the "install Adobe" button, for any version greater than 5 (and five will do it too, if they only have 16 MB) they get FUCKED UP THE ASSHOLE WITH A BARBED WIRE CONDOM.
Reinstall the OS or spend many hours chopping out bloat by hand. Reinstall is easier.
Been there, done it, at least FIVE TIMES NOW supporting elderly retired folks (who typically just want to visit a fly-tying site, but who have grandkids who try to install Adobe).
Complained to Adobe. They don't care.
cost
Fox it - $100
PDFcreator (open source)- Free
No brainer
Gah! Where's my mod points now???
This must have been during the lecture to young master Luke about the dangers of wearing a red uniform when landing on strange planets.
PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Works like a charm.
And the army is only a part of the military. Not the whole military.
pentagon.mil is running Sun's webserver on Linux.
navy.mil is running IIS on Linux.
usmc.mil is running lotus-domino on an unknown os.
Not to mention the individual units within the military, each with their own IT groups, each running their own servers.
Not to mention the fact that you missed the entire point:
netcraft reports IIS running on LINUX. How much do you trust netcraft now?
Yes the visio version of the bar is right PITA.
The toolbars are dead easy to remove.
How to permanently disable in Mac OS X without hackin' around (tested with Office 2004, Acrobat Professional 6.0.1):
.ppa and .dot files from the subfolders with similarly named empty folders by using File->New Folder (use the Finders get info pane to actually add the respective file-extensions to the three items)
Similar to the situation on Microsoft Windows the toolbars tend to want to reinstall themselves each and every time you open Acrobat professional. I've found the following workaround on OS X:
In the Finder navigate to the folder Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Startup
Replace the PDFmaker.xla,
The next time you start an MSOffice application the toolbar is gone; the next time you start Acrobat professional it still thinks the installation is complete and it won't attempt to re-install.
yes, in every miserable way
Why the left one; and the scroll wheel lets me select which options I want (print to PDF, Email PDF, etc.).
This works for us to get rid of the PDF icons in Office 2003. Configure Outlook to use Word as the editor of your e-mail. Start Outlook - this pre-loads word for e-mail editing. Start Word -- the PDF icons are gone!!
zenray
To be fair, the Mac Mini doesn't even come close to $2000.
Some people need to use multiple monitors in order to work efficiently. Can the Mac mini run Quartz on a display other than the one controlled by its onboard video?
Seemed coherent to me. A bit misplaced, but coherent.
What's a mouse?
Has anyone ever timed Acrobat (or Acrobat reader) on it's startup? It's reaaaally slow. Has anyone ever had IE freeze only to kill the process and find Acrobat Reader's "Do you want to check for updates?" box hidden under the browser?
I have several times, including once today. Checking the don't ever do this again checkbox only seems to work until the next upgrade and then it just turns itself back on again. (or so it seems)
Acrobat does have a lot going for it, but the ways of doing many things are irritating. Some things we just learn to live with. That doesn't mean it's right, but it also doesn't mean it's a reason to throw away the tool.
The world according to SComps
Acrobat 7.0 Professional costs $449.
A Mac Mini costs $499.
Doug Moen.
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
You should probably get used to that sound...
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
This is why I use Acrobat 5. No bloated features, but still lots of functionality. Does anyone else love the fact that Mac OS X can produce PDFs without having to install ANY Adobe products?
Print to PDF != Acrobat in any way shape or form!
/. a giant moron magnet or what?!?!?!?
Is all of
Right click on toobar, and uncheck "PDFMaker 7.0".
What's the big deal?
I just went to:
:shrug:
View->Toolbars and unchecked PDFMarker 7.0.
No problems here.
So do I.
(ok, so I actually just select the PDF printer, but it's still the same number of clicks)
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
I never figured out why reader installs a BHO. I always disable it, and notice no detrimental effects. Of course I also disable OLE integration for PDFs, since I'd rather download them usually, and more importantly have it respond quicker and cause less stability issues. What does the Browser Helper Object in acrobat reader do?
One that I use frequently is the ability to merge many small documents in a binder to create a larger PDF.
In the same vein as Em_Adespoton's suggestion of Combine PDF, I suggest you check out the Command Line Utility I like using to combine pdf files which is pdftk.
A very clean and efficient tool.
blog
I love hieroglyphics and mangled brains, you insensitive clod!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Go to Tools>Templates and Add-ins Under Templates, uncheck PDFMaker.dot. It will not load it anymore. Or you could simply leave, and choose to not view that Toolbar. Not sure what the big freaking deal is.
Looking into a Bug Report on this (move or remove toolbar, quit outlook, relaunch, toolbar is back in original position) I see the developer comment "Because of an Outlook limitation, the toolbar position is saved every time one creates a new email." So, the workaround is after removing the toolbar, create an email. Sounds less like malware and more like a bug due to a lack in the Office toolbar API.
Please excuse my lack of sophistication, but is there some special reason that Office and Acrobat are required for making pdf's? I've been very happy with OpenOffice.org. It creates nice pdf's without any hassle.
Oh no no no... it does plenty of things.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to work! I was never kinder to the registry during the whole week before I killed it. And every night about midnight I turned on the back door and opened it oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my edits, I put in a dark comment, commented so that no bits came out, and then I thrust in my command. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the backups. It took me an hour to place my whole script within the opening so far that I could see the library as it lay within its folder. Ha! Would a madman have been so wise as this? And then when my script was well in the folder I executed it cautiously -- oh, so cautiously -- cautiously (for the hard drive creaked), I launched it just so much that a single thin electron fell upon the vulture toolbar. And this I did for seven long nights, every night just at midnight, but I found the toolbar always closed, and so it was impossible to do the work, for it was not the toolbar that vexed me but this Evil Icon. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into my applications and spoke courageously to them, calling them by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how they had passed the night. So you see it would have been a very profound program, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon the toolbar while it slept.
I had my head in, and was about to open the folder, when my pinky slipped upon the enter key, and the program sprang up in the toolbar, crying out, "MAKE PDF?" And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses? With a loud yell, I threw open the script and leaped into the registry. It err'd once -- once only. In an instant I dragged it to the trash, and emptied it quickly. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done.
Yet, upon the next reopening, first and formost it mocks me. It was open, wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness -- all a dull grey with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones, but I could see nothing else of document's font or margin, for I had directed my sight as if by instinct precisely upon the damned spot.
I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury, but the toolbar remained. O God! what COULD I do? I foamed -- I raved -- I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and bounced upon my cube, but the toolbar arose over all applications and continually increased. It spawned over -- over -- over! And still the office chatted pleasantly , and smiled. Was it possible they saw not? Almighty God! -- no, no? Adobe saw! -- Adobe suspected! -- Adobe KNEW! -- they were making a mockery of my horror! -- this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical responses no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! -- and now -- again -- hark! louder! louder! louder! LOUDER! --
"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -- tear up the registry! -- here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous icon!"
With profound apolgies to Poe, this is the truth of that toolbar.
The only problem is that the next time you start Adobe Acrobat you get a nag screen stating that Acrobat needs to make repairs.
Here is a Mac OS X-ey hack/kludge to get around this problem.
Acrobat will no longer try to install the missing PDFMaker.dot files and your office programs will be Adobe PDF Toolbar-free even upon relaunch.
blog
I blame Microsoft for setting the standard for "I now own your computer sucker." You can't load a product these days without it assuming that you are bent over and ready to accept everything the vendor feels like doing. Adobe is only following in the footsteps of Real and AOL and others who install download managers and e-wallets and toolbar enhancements. It all started with MS, which makes you suffer through all their programs instantiating when you start Windows, so they are all "snappier" to load than the otherwise superior products from just about anyone else... this is a social problem not a technological one.
I'm looking over the wall, and they're looking at me!
Visio is a really cool program for doing all sorts of diagrams. It's great for network diagrams and flow charts, application diagrams, among hundreds of other uses. Some people even use it for crime scene diagrams.
It was made by Visio corporation. It was purchased by Microsoft in 2000, where they simply re-labeled it "Microsoft Visio 2000" and did nothing else to the product.
In 2003, they upgraded Visio with more detailed shapes and other visual enhancements, along with add-on tools you can use to auto-discover and map out your network into Visio diagrams for you. You can also export a Visio to a web page, with clickable objects and everything.
If you run Windows, it's definately worth a look-see, especially if you have to document any sort of network or process.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Spoke too quickly. The problem is robust, as they say. There are a couple of other things I needed to do. FYI, I'm running Adobe Acrobat Professional 6.0.2.
After following the above instructions, I also had to do the following.
blog
How about using a different pdf viewer?
Foxit PDF is a great little pdf viewer for windows - you couldn't pay me enough to install acrobat...
Gekido's Lair
The Visio team has has actually made quite a few improvements to Visio since the last pre-MS version 5. They have tried to integrate it more into the rest of the Office suite by changing to standard Office Command Bars, adding VBA support, Antialiased rendering, Transparent fills, Scroll wheel zooming, better connector routing, Dynamic guides, Automated shape gluing, and many other new features.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Problem solved. You can get it from http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php.e ad more about it at http://www.searchlores.org/pdffing.htm
R
Perhaps they dont conform to the 'Microsoft guidelines' because the guidelines dont conform to what the 3rd parties are trying to accomplish?
There are many cases where you really *need* something different in a UI to be productive.
Not everything is a word processor or spreadsheet and works well with what Microsoft thinks is right. When was the last time Microsoft produced a good CAD application.. Oh wait, that isnt their market is it.. See my point?.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
ffs
The PDF toolbar V6 can be hidden by right clicking on a toolbar and unselecting PDFMAker from the list of toolbars. The same way as every other toolbar in Office. What's the fuss about?
I suspect the problem is more with people...
An incredibly intellingent person, not to mention handsome and very very rich
In their efforts to occupy everyone's desktop, how dare companies assume that they own our desktop?
Fuck 'em, just fuck 'em! Boycott them and their efforts every chance that you get!
Yes, and I mentioned they made several improvements in Visio 2003, but when they purchased Visio in 2000, Microsoft made no changes to the product at that time. They took Visio 2000, which was a great product, and stuck a Microsoft sticker on it.
It was just a statement, no more then that.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Which is pretty farking dumb, as the OS has PDF generation BUILT IN. There is maybe one time out of 1 thousand that I'd want Adobe's PDF generator over the built-in one in OS X. And for that, they have a stupid toolbar that automatically comes up in Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and maybe Entourage (I never use Entourage).
:-/
And the BEST thing... it has a bug in it, so every time you quit Excel, you get an ERROR dialog. Sweet.
Can't say I give Adobe higher than a 4 on the software quality scale
6.1 & 7.0 versions are too worse and bigger than the quicker and tiniest 5.0.5 version.
I'm printing this /. in .pdf, hohoho.
emacs, plus LaTeX, plus pdflatex.
Don't go complaining about Save A Copy. If you'd spent any time as a graphic designer, you'd understand how useful it is. If it disappears from Adobe products, you'll find me knocking at your door.
the complete kerfuffle you get when you try to help people get rid of it.
Life is a continual education in the triumph of application over ability.
1. Requires write permission for all users (non-admin) permissions in
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Registration Database
If you installed Acrobat after installing Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive which don't need write permissions in the Registration Database, then the original default read only permissions correctly set by the other Adobe applications causes problems for the Acrobat application
2. Acrobat writes folders everywhere on the system. Even if you haven't bought any eBooks. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive don't need to generate legal documents in the users Document folder or place file in the /Users/Shared/ folder
/Users/Shared/Adobe PDF 6.0/ _______ (Unnecessary. Wrong Place)
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/
~Documents/Acrobat/Legal _______ (Unnecessary)
~Documents/Acrobat Reader/Legal _______ (Unnecessary)
~Documents/eBooks _______ (Unnecessary)
~Library/Acobat User Data/ _______ (Unnecessary. Wrong place)
~Library/Application Support/Adobe/
~Library/Preferences/Adobe/
3. Acrobat tool bar plugin "pushes" Microsoft Office tool bar around and takes up an entire row by itself. This is another pet peeve of mine
4. Acobat 6.0.2 and prior versions had issues with Microsoft Office 2004 SP1. The known issue about Excel 2004 SP1 quitting with the "Compile error in hidden module: AutoExec" was mentioned. That's actually related to the Acrobat "PDFMaker.xla" startup item. Adobe has finally fixed this in version 6.0.3. Another administrator indicated he had a user with a PowerPoint file that refuses to open in PowerPoint SP1, but will open fine otherwise in older versions Office vX and Office 2004 11.0 (and other Windows versions...)
My message to the Acrobat team is to stop writing poorly written applications for Mac OS X and to talk to your coworkers writing other well written Adobe applications. They better fix most of this in Acrobat 7.0 otherwise I'm not upgrading if there is no improvement.
Version 6... right click the toolbar, uncheck PDF Toolbar. How freakin hard is that?
I'm the root of all that's evil, yeah, but you can call me cookie.
While installing messenger, it asks you if you want to install Yahoo! mail. Even if you do not check that option, you get Yahoo! integrated into the shell so that when you right-click on a file you get the option 'Emai with Yahoo!'. Why you get that option even when you say that you don't want Yahoo! mail beats me. And oh, there is no straightforward way to remove it short of uninstalling Yahoo! messenger itself. Isn't that some kind of malware?
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
last I checked every toolbar that adobe installs can be removed very easily and you can also setup the installer so that there are no toolbars if that's the way you like it. Also a tool bar has nothing to do with spyware. Stuff like Encarta and pretty much most other MS software installs things withot telling you all the time so you should be used to stuff like that by no if you are using windows.
On Windows anyway, the installer is an MSI. So, you can do this:
/i adobe.msi REMOVE=PDFMaker -qb!
msiexec
Replace adobe.msi with the install file's actual name.
Adobe puts the PDFmaker stuff into a seperate MSI feature, so you can remove it easily.
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/328399.html
learn how to search the knowlege base.
period
But like most PDF tools, it doesn't preserve hyperlinks from the original document (Adobe's tools do).
Even OpenOffice fails that test and the control the whole application and PDF writing code... it still breaks its hyperlinks when wiring a PDF.
A free tool to convert Word docs to PDF with hyperlinks intact would be a godsend.
I've tried everything I could find, in Outlook, in Word, and in Acrobat (6, full version) but the annoying and darn-near-useless Acrobat toolbar (which is about 1 button) will only go away until I reboot or restart Outlook. It isn't that bad, but it's quite annoying when I ask for something to happen and it doesn't. And why would I want to attach an email to my email as a pdf? My Outlook Acrobat toolbar stinks because it smells like desperation. Anyone know how to get rid of it?
The truth doesn't care what I think.
anyone know how to remove Acrobat 'integration' with mozilla? all it does is crash.
while a save as + open takes all of 5s
I never said that people *didn't* read PDF on screen, I said they should *avoid it at all costs*.
My comment reflected Adobe's wanting to replace PDF as the standard format for any type of document. Instead of reading from a webpage, they'd rather have you read from a PDF. It just doesn't make any sense at all.
A great example of this is an online auto brochure that I saw once (either for Jaguar or Nissan.. I forgot): it was in PDF embedded with flash and some other nonsense that could just as easily been built as a webpage. The joke is, the page size was so odd, and all of the content was buried in the flash -- so it couldn't even be printed out!
Adobe has been pushing for PDF as a de-facto standard for any document (print or on screen) for quite a while now. I've been to one of their brainwashing sessions -- it's quite impressive, until you realize that they're trying to push PDF beyond its useful means.
--- Dan
I want to get rid of the toolbar, not PDFMaker. PDFMaker installs a menu, too. I would prefer to use the menu and save my screen space for other things instead of another toolbar.
open office has been real handy to have with its native ability to export to pdf or flash, however, one of the tasks i usually have when working with pdf's is to build a single pdf out of a variety of sources. are there any alternatives to acrobat for doing merging? and more importantly, why does acrobat whine and refuse to merge a couple of files created with open office with an error to the effect of "both documents contain the same font, so cannot be merged?"
---
If the moderator who rightly marked this as off-topic ever checks back, I was the dork who gave him a meta-mod of "unfair".
For this, I apologize. I had originally marked you as "fair", but then slipped when reaching for the submit button.
sorry.
PDFs are not a major area of my expertise. I know that they're only supposed to be a "distribution" format. However, I've ended up doing some informal support on the following problem:
.doc, which I think is pretty poor choice. Format X ought to be the same as Format Y. But Acrobat doesn't seem to let you edit paragraphs... it seems to save every line of text separately.
.doc LaTeX, Quark and Pagemaker have all been mentioned. RTF doesn't have enough formatting)
Alice writes a document in format X. Bob (in legal) edits text all over the document. Then Bob saves it in format Y and distributes it to 900 employees. Now, in my opinion PDF is the only good option for format Y - distribution with a good printable layout.
Right now format X is
So what I really want is for somebody to have made a better PDF editor, or to tell me how to have working paragraphs in Acrobat. Failing that, I want there to be a universally accessible format that has similar capabilities. (HTML/CSS seems best;
thanks!
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Isn't that what Windows is, in the first place? :)
I understand WinXP is a lot better, but there are still times when the best you can do in terms of time savings are to wipe the HDD and start over with a fresh install. So, BAM -- looks like Windows itself is exactly what you were looking for!
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."