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Adobe Reader 7.0 Coming to Linux
Sometimes_Rational writes "There is now one less thing for Windows and Mac users to point to when claiming desktop usability superiority. While not officially listed in Adobe's download page, you can get Adobe Reader 7.0 for Linux from the company's FTP server
according to this
article at The Inquirer ,
which also has a review. The upshot is that Reader 7.0 for Linux
is as bloated as its Windows and Mac siblings, but it loads much
faster and is more useable than version 5. I imagine that this will get loads of comments about how Reader for Linux headed downhill after version 4. Or was it 3?"
For instance, my Bank Statements have been coming in password protected files for years now. So I very much welcome this new product.
I prefer xpdf because it loads much faster, and you can hit the 'r'eload button when you update your document. It's quite useful when you're working with LaTeX.
The "only" drawback I see is that sometimes when reading certain articles I get some really ugly, pixelated fonts.
I suppose there might be a fix around for that? Anyone?
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
For the impatent:
e nu/
ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/7x/7.0/
Nice to see that Adobe is putting some effort into Linux and I'm sure the Adobe reader provides things open source readers don't yet support. Namely I think there is currently no OS reader that supports filling out forms.
That said, for all my needs, the new OS pdf readers are good enough. They used to suck (kpdf and gpdf were a joke and xpdf was simply ugly), but the new kpdf is simply awesome and the same goes for evince.
Acroread renders better than xpdf, and has much better document navigation features to boot.
Yes, xpdf is somewhat faster (although acroread7 feels faster to me than crappy old 5.x).
Good thing everyone can have both!
Anyone had it crash yet? Acroread 5.0.1 thru 5.0.6 (or so) crashed regularly for me...
What's wrong with xpdf? I am sure it loads a heck of a lot faster.
Adobe's reader is more compatible and (at least for me) loads just as fast as xpdf. I was actually surprised it loaded so fast, though it's not compatible with SELinux - you need to change the context on the *.api plugin files and the ADMPlugin.apl file using "chcon -t shlib_t file_to_change_context" before you can run the reader.
I've been using this for several days under slackware, and I must say I'm impressed. It loads quickly enough (though not as fast as xpdf), but it fits right into my desktop as far as widgets go, and the rendering looks great! The printing support also work fine with the KDE system (you just tell it to print to "kprinter"), and so far I haven't experienced the weird orientation issues I sometimes get with landscape-oriented documents printing improperly.
As far as installation goes, I just used rpm2tgz to convert the downloaded rpm into a slackpack then used installpkg. I had to create a symlink to the executable, which was /usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/bin/acroread.
My biggest gripe so far is the annoying, but thankfully small, banner add in the top right corner advertising random Adobe services, but it's not *too* intrusive. Here is a screenshot.
Or you could use a PDF/PS viewer that's nicely integrated with your desktop, and has a sane feature-set and good usability. On GNOME we've got Evince, and on KDE there's KPDF. Evince (and now KPDF, I believe) is backed by the Freedesktop.org Poppler library (which is in turn backed by Cairo which can use hardware acceleration for faster PDF rendering). Kristian (as referenced earlier today on slashdot re: wobbly windows) is hard at work on adding nice features needed for desktop apps. Poppler is a fork from the Xpdf rendering code (with the maintainer's blessing, since he was using his own rendering infrastructure and didn't want to mix two backends into Xpdf).
We've been doing a lot of experimenting with making the "core features" of Evince better for on-screen reading, rather than working on the sort of extra packed in features in Acrobat. For example, when you press page down, evince will slightly darken the area on the screen where your page was as it smooth scrolls. That lets your eye track its position much easier, so once the scroll is over you just keep reading without a visual "seek". KPDF is cool too, so either way you swing you've got a good choice.
Acroread 7.0 is using GTK+ for its widgets, but this hardly makes it have a native "feel". Use it for a minute and its pretty clear its a cross-platform app port.
Try kpdf 0.4 (one that comes with KDE 3.4)? This is what a pdf viewer should look like. 1. Type ahead search. 2. Easy copy-paste. With acrobat reader it is not possible to select/copy a paragraph in 2 column format document, but with kpdf one can easily do that. 3. Can watch for changes in the viewed file and update the view accordingly. 4. Presentation mode. 5. KDE app. Native look and feel. Can use kio_slaves. 6. No bloat. Open source.
on windows as well, you just need to go in the installation directory, then in the Plugins subdirectory and remove EVERYTHING BUT these 3 files (just move them somewhere else so you can put them back if you have a problem)
EWH32.api
Search5.api
Search.api
after I did that and disabled the splash screen Acrobat reader 7 loads up nearly instantaneously on XP. I'm not taking credit for this, I found this tip somewhere I can't quite remember right now and it surely works!
-- the cake is a lie
AFAIK it is 32 bit, but if you have 32-compat libraries installed, it will just run in 32 bit mode automatically.
This is unlike flash, since it does not have its own process, it needs that the parent application (firefox) runs in 32-bit mode as well.
However, if you are really desparate for a 32 bit system, but have a 64 bit system, you should set up a 32-bit chroot. It wastes disk space -- but can be highly useful.
badness 10000
Please... you can't even scroll across pages with the direction keys in xpdf! its a page reader, not a document reader
I don't want to read
Try it first, compare it with xpdf, and choose what suits your need - just dont' discard it offhand, because it is a Good Thing >)
Gentoo users have been able to install Adobe Reader 7.0 for two weeks now. (Though the firefox plugin didn't work properly until a week ago.)Loads fast, looks okay (GTK), and most importantly CLOSES WITH ONLY ONE MOUSE CLICK.
It's a pre-release version that's not yet intended for the public, though it's not marked as beta or pre-release. According to http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/57616 (german) it's been put online for a customer in the netherlands. The final version can be expected around mid 2005. The acrobat files mentioned on heise.de and this /. article are the same, so i guess the real final will still take some time.
You can fill out pdfs with flpsed. flpsed allows you add text to pdfs.
On another note xpdf is many times faster for small pdfs than acroread. However, if you zoom in on a big pdf (like a map) w/ xpdf it renders the whole thing to X as an image. If that image is bigger than your memory (regardless of the screen size), X swaps out and your machine is reduced to a crawl. Acroread, on the other hand, doesn't do that. It just renders the part of the screen that is visible, which is slower than keeping your image in memory, but much faster than reading swapped contents from disk.
And what's the problem w/ all of you? I just downloaded Reader 7 at 200kKB/s from adobe. Where's the slashdot effect?
It's been in portage testing for some time, and I definitely will keep using it. Not only do you have the peace of mind that it will render your PDF correctly, but the GTK2 GUI looks far better than xpdf or acroread5, and the loading times aren't too bad at all. I haven't even had to remove the useless plugins.
One qualm - I had to delete one plugin file to stop an error message coming up on start (It was invalid or something).
Trim back your plugins. For the most part you only need the following:
EWH32.api, printme.api, Search.api
Make a backup of the plugin directory (folder, whatever)
X:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader\plug_ins
And then delete all exept the three mentioned above from the original plugin dir (folder, whatever)
Should load MUCH faster.
Then in the Print dialog box, change the "print command" from "lp" to "gtklp." Bingo! A friendly, usable, and full-featured Print dialog box that does everything you'd ever want in CUPS.
It works for Opera too...