Slashdot Mirror
Adobe Releases Acrobat Client for Linux
DanMan writes "Adobe has released a reader client (Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0) for the linux operating system. No news on open sourcing the client, but they're making a start. You can download the client from their site."
Adobe Reader 7.0 Coming to Linux - Described how to download it.
has been on gentoo portage for like a month now
How is this making a start? Acrobat reader 6 didn't count?
Now Linux users can share in shoddy intrusive software that causes all sorts of incessant errors!
Hurray for version 7!
I'm a big tall mofo.
I've been using acroread 7.0 on Linux for ages now. It's been in Debian for a long time.
What's the big deal?
That'll be the day.
I've tried it - it's slower than a retarded kid hopped up on goofballs tired to a tree.
An acrobat reader has been around for linux for a few years now, this certainly isn't news.
37Mb RPM?! I think i'll just stick with gpdf...
Wonder if it'll try to install crap, like the windows version trys to install the Yahoo! toolbar.
That's almost as cool as the day you could already get it from Adobe's FTP.
38 megs just so I could read a damn pdf. Sure, no big deal... kpdf, xpdf and the others put together don't need that much space. I can't wait to see how many gigs it eats up once uncompressed!
No surprise to anyone here...
Last Adobe reader was version 5.0. I've needed an update for a while now.
I honestly don't care if it's open source or not. The reader is free, and that's good enough.
OT - I clicked "download" on Adobe's site, and RealPlayer tried to play the RPM! Strange....(Fedora Core 3, Firefox 1.02, RealPlayer 10.02.608)
More OT - FP?
If God had meant for man to see the sunrise, He would have scheduled it later in the day.
For the impatent:
e nu/
ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/7x/7.0/
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Too bad can't run it in my pure 64-bit Gentoo.
Unforunately for Adobe kpdf 3.4 is already the best reader under linux..
How does Adobe Reader qualify as a client program of any sort? That would require a server component and some sort of protocol between the two, wouldn't it?
Wake up guys, it's been in debian (testing) for weeks!
(which should convince the reader that this is extremeley old news)
(no, I assure you, I'm a Debian fan!)
It seems to me that Adobe really has no self-motivated reason to go open-source with Acrobat Reader.
After all, why would they want to increase the possibility of someone reverse-engineering the PDF format and writing free/open source Acrobat production applications, when they're currently selling about seven of them, and all for a hefty chunk of change?
The only significant thing they could ever do is of course a Linux version of Photoshop. It will have crappy old static linked GTK / homemade interface like Acrobat, but people (sheeple) don't care.
The front page five minutes ago should have read: "The next Slashdot story was ready two weeks ago, and subscribers can kick themselves for giving us their money!"
How can this be news? I'm running acroread 7 for weeks in my Gentoo system now... It rocks btw. But news?
It appears by this announcement that Linux is being viewed by the world at large as a viable, everyday, grey-suited respectable OS. Who would have thunk it? I remember the days when it was the pap of those of us living in our parent's basements!! :-P
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Doesn't it include loads of fonts?
This one will also let you fill in PDF forms.
Why is it a reader 'client'? Is there a reader 'server' as well?
How coudl they open source Reader when it embeds some DRM algorithm used for ebooks.
Ludovic
--
Blog
More usefully, if you want free as in beer and open as in source software to create PDFs on Linux get yourself over to OpenOffice.org
Stick Men
One really cool thing about the 7.0 version of Adobe Readers is that they can be extended with Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions [adobe.com] to add features that are normally only available when you buy Adobe Acrobat. Of course, Reader Extensions costs something. But what's great is that given the right "pixie dust", Linux is no longer a platform for just viewing PDFs, but it can do PDF Collaboration and forms routing just like its Windows and Macintosh counterparts.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I have used Xpdf exclusively for a long time. In what way is Adobe reader superior to Xpdf?
adobe acrobat reader has been out there for a while (at least for 5 or 6 years).
Simple, eh?
Adobe has been releasing Acrobat for linux for years. This doesn't count as 'an step towards open sourcing the reader'.
For some real open source steps, look into their site. They have some nice UI rendering framework there for free (and open source).
No news on open sourcing the client, but they're making a start
What the hell? So is every commercial company out there just supposed to release everything as open source? Good grief Charlie Brown...why would they do that?
There are plenty of Open Source options for reading pdf's. There's no reason to expect/demand that a commercial software company should open source their products. I mean, come on people...enough is enough.
acrobat 7 for Linux is definitely an improvement, but after *not* having it and using xpdf, I'm not sure which one I like better.
I hope they actually bother paying attention to my mouse preferences. Version 5 ignores my scroll wheel and it uses clunky Motif widgets (bleagh). More likely they'll only use the opportunity include some of the more unpleasant misfeatures like spying. Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Direct downloads:
Acrobat Reader 7.0--English for Linux® (.tar.gz), 38.2MB
Acrobat Reader 7.0--English for Linux® (.rpm), 38MB
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I downloaded, installed and ran it a couple of hours ago. I expect it to be done loading real soon now.
Pdfs are Unfit for human consumption
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
See http://lwn.net/Articles/129729/ why you
should handle it with care, if privacy is important to you.
xpdf has always functioned MUCH faster and with MUCH greater stability than any version of acrobat I've ever seen.
That said, Any large commercial vendor releasing their software on Linux is a very good thing. Maybe next some more video game vendors will jump on the bandwagon.
And of course competition is always good. This forces both xpdf and adobe to make themselves better.
The Answer
PDF format is open and there are a number of open source viewers for Linux. I don't think it's that important that Adobe open source their reader or even port it at all. This is just one extra option, no big news for us.
There's been recent talk about new document "tracking" features that require a call home to read, and other stupid "smart data" junk which require a blackbox client. If Adobe expects me to run their spyware on my Linux machine, they have another think coming.
[
Why the fsck should it matter whether or not it is open source? Why can't the community merely be happy that yet another major piece of software is available for the unices?* Just because the kernel and a huge amount of other apps are some sort of open-source licensed DOES NOT MEAN that every frickin piece of software needs to be as well. As has been stated already, if you are that much of a free-license bible thumper, there are plenty of open-source apps that let you do the same basic thing: read a PDF file. Just don't use Adobe's...it's all about choice, right? * yes I know Adobe has made readers available before for unix/linux, I have been using it on Solaris since Acrobat Reader 4.x.
"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." - Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"
More likely they'll only use the opportunity include some of the more unpleasant misfeatures like spying.
Xix.
(damn mouse button!)
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
They're idea of a printing interface is 'lpr'.
gpdf is faster and has a *much* better ( gnome ) printing interface.
I have used kpdf, gpdf, and xpdf as well - they work OK, but in my experience Acrobat Reader is still the goto client if you have a pdf the others can't read or for advanced features. The others are steadily improving, and I think will get there in time, but basically until kpdf/gpdf/xpdf start opening pdf documents as well as or better than Acrobat for all available features, I fear Acrobat Reader will still be around.
Incidently, 7.0 seems to be a huge leap from version 5. Works much better with modern Linux software, despite a few lingering quirks. I had not heard of any pressure or consideration on the part of Adobe to release the code to Reader, but that would seriously rock if they did.
I note with some amusement that the Linux version of Acrobat Reader still has the purchase Adobe Acrobat link in the menus, despite a version not being available on Linux.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
There was a 5.0.4 version for linux offered until a couple of days ago when the 7.0 version became available. Adobe never did release a version 6 for linux.
J.
If you want open source, use Ghostscript. I assume (and they probably do too) that to open source part of one of their most lucrative product lines would commercial suicide. It's not like the file format is closed because it isn't.
v.5 did crash quite a bit, esp. the browser plugin. Very frustrating. It was comparitively ugly too.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Christian Marillat has made available unofficial Debian packages of Acrobat 7 since a few weeks now. On sarge or sid, add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list:
Then it's as easy as apt-get update; apt-get install acroread mozilla-acroread. This gives you the core functionality and Web browser plugin. (Incidentally, there are a bunch of other useful unofficial debs there, including mplayer and lame.)
You can also install the Javascript plugin and a whole bunch of other Acrobat plugins with apt-get install acroread-plugins. However, be aware that some plugins may report back to the mother ship: LWN article. Also, they will eat another 43 MB of disk space.
- Kevin B. McCarty
Be sure to read this article before you install the reader.
The software contains functionality that could cause serious privacy concerns - it is possible to include a tracking mechanism in PDF's, readers that this great 'feature' will then contact some website and keep track of how many people read that document.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Why does every single thing need to be open sourced. I think it's pretty cool they are releasing a Linux binary.
GNUStep?! LOL... You know, the 80's were a long time ago.
MDI is pretty much the same thing as tabs. Do you not use tabs in Firefox? Or maybe you're just spouting off some garbage you've been fed about MDI sucking and why we don't need MDI. Hint: MDI was never really a bad thing, it just needed a little help (tabs). OS X uses pretty much the same idea to manage applications. Having 100 little windows all over your system is retarded.
Do you have a mullet also?
This reply is an exact copy of the comment in an earlier thread about Acrobat 7 being released for Linux. The poster is a karma whore.
I know this is Slashdot and all. But if people expect that everytime a company releases a product for Linux that they MUST OpenSource it or they have "only made a start" then there will never be a market for Linux.
So if Adobe released Photoshop for Linux should they OpenSource it? Are Oracle "only making a start" by supporting Linux because they don't Open Source their database ?
Wake up people. This is good news that people consider Linux a platform worth supporting. This isn't the "start" this is the game.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
see http://lwn.net/Articles/129729/
Nice try, you miserable cut&paste clod.
For the record, your post is basically a complete rip of this post by El Cubano with a couple of lines stacked in front of it. Moderators, please act accordingly.
I do not think behavior such as yours should be encouraged. Actually, I hope you'll reincarnate into some exotic frog, SCO techie, or worse.
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
* You must manually include it in your menu. It should at least hit the majors (GNOME, KDE).
That's odd, on my suse 9.1 machine it was automatically added to the kde menu.
In other fresh and hot news:
****THE POPe HAS DIES*****
+5 Informative
Lol In your face asshole, keep crying
I'm guessing that if you run LDD on the file, it will report that there are very few dependacies. Working for a company that releases Linux software in binary form, typically we have to statically link or include all the libraries.
//begin anti-MDI rant
//end rant
I really got screwed by MDI yesterday (with a little of my own carelessness thrown in). I use Windows and MS Office as rarely as possible, but I had to put together a PowerPoint presentation for a talk. I had two open PowerPoint files, and each seemed to be in its own instance of the program - separate windows, separate taskbar tabs. When I closed the one I didn't need, the other one closed as well, taking about an hour's worth of work down with it. Granted, it asked me if I wanted to save my work, but I didn't read the dialog closely enough, because I assumed it referred to the document in the window I was closing.
Try this if you are at a Windows/Office box:
1. open foo.ppt
2. open bar.ppt
3. close the foo.ppt window with the X in the upper right hand corner of the window.
4. poof! both windows disappear.
This is really bizarre behavior. If you do the above, it looks like there are two instances of PowerPoint, each running in its own window, rather than one instance managing two windows, as is the case. And even if one realizes that it is only one instance of the app, closing a window should not exit the app if there are other windows open.
A quick check of apps on my work (Windows) and home (Debian) box revealed only Excel to behave this way. Even MS Word and IE don't do that.
v7 for Linux was out nearly a month ago. I guess this continues the grand Slashdot time warp tradition, eh?
...grateful that some companies are porting their apps to run on Linux, why-oh-why is it always the ones for which perfectly acceptable open-source alternatives already exist e.g. Acroread (KPDF, GPDF, XPDF) and Nero (K3B)? When are we going to see photoshop and other specialised developmental tools being ported? Again, I don't want to seem ungrateful, but this is just such a shame, and when Nero see and report pretty much zero sales from the Linux community (because of the existence of free, Free and good "K3B"), what kind of message will this send to the companies looking to port apps for which there is no existing Linux equivalent?
READ this before installing it: http://lwn.net/Articles/129729/
Remote Approach's reporting did not work when we viewed the document with Kpdf, Xpdf and Adobe Reader 5.0.10. It also failed using Apple's "Preview" application on Mac OS X. The document was still viewable with no apparent glitch in other PDF readers, but the reporting function did not work. However, when we opened the file using Adobe Acrobat Reader 7, Remote Approach started logging views from our IP address. After doing a little research, we found that Adobe's Reader was connecting to http://www.remoteapproach.com/remoteapproach/loggi ng.asp each time we opened the document
(Easy fix: Assign a IP which doesn't work ie: 0.0.0.1 to www.remoteapproach.com in your /etc/hosts)
Nothing innovative has happened with it right ?
From what I've heard its slower than the last version.
-- "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper a
As far as I can remember (i.e. from version 7.0) my suse distro already had a version of arcoread. Was that one of the unfree versions or was it just a wine-ed version? ?-)
It does NOT need to be frickin open sourced!!!
Any chance JavaScript can now be disabled without the annoying warning message every time I close the reader? I like the rendering and the ability to fill PDF forms, but not the privacy implications of having JavaScript enabled.
I don't know what's so exciting about acroread or whatever. xpdf seems to have a pretty reasonable, if spartan, interface. Cut and paste doesn't work unless you hack it up a bit to side-step PDF's "protections". I tend to run non-x86 Linux systems, so binary only applications aren't as attractive to me anyways.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One question, why would anyone want to go for a propietry pdf reader when there are plenty good, open source ones out there. Evince is fine for me.
It sould return like in the good old days.
when all software where distributed as souce
and binnary for popular arch as a convienence.
distributed the source DONT mean they are open!
you can have same pain-in-the-ars restictive
EULA whit source code pakage.
the point is better compatibily and nicer
costomisation. good for all costomer.
Hidding source is a Micro-Soft invention to
prevent inovations and hide thers ugly hacks
from thers costomers.
Free Software is good, but if you have to use
proprietry ones you'll be happy to see it
runing after you upgrade hardwares and os.
Source code protect your investment in EXPENSIVE
software products.
Asking corp for source is fair and they sould
provide them. At worst they sould provide them
once they stop suporting it. (see ID software
for exemple)
-Bob
Also, (minor), the background color of the button bar doesn't adhere to the theme your desktop is set to. It's a darkish grey, not the lightgrey that's default on RedHat or Debian.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Christian Marillat has been offering this for several weeks now, in his Debian repository.
I just upgraded to Acroread 7.03 from there.
And there are all sort of other fine goodies in there too: mplayer, codecs, etc., not available in the main repositories.
Thanks, Christian!
I think that people should start whining about companies that doesn't open source their software when expanding it onto the Linux platform. The Linux platform will benefit from ALL software (okay, not malware, spyware etc) that gets ported to it. Maybe Linux might even go mainstream one day because of it.
IMHO, the specification is well-written and easy to understand. If other companies wanting to make their file formats a standard were willing to make such good specifications freely available, I would quit calling them anti-competitive behemoths. (They know who they are.)
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
I can't believe how many games have come out for Linux lately. I've been totally blown away by it. Off the top of my head, the big PC titles I can think of that have come out for Linux include Doom3, Descent, Soldier of Fortune, Sin City, Postal . . . there's dozens of others. When you add the fact that the best PSX emmulators run better on Linux than Windows I'm not sure where you're missing out on games.
What kind of advantages does AA7 offer over http://www.gnome.org/projects/evince/ evince? I'm sure there are advantages...I just don't know if they're compelling enough for me to dump the first decent free pdf viewer I've come across.
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 same happened when nero released a version for linux. rather than being appreciated for at last acknowledging the existence of linux, they were shunted for not being 'open' enough, and their product denounced inferior to the free alternative (k3b v nero).
don't moan that companies aren't trying to provide for linux users, if when they do release a product, you write bad reviews of it and criticise their attempts to get closer to a userbase they know little about, and can even fear.
Somewhat remarkably, the new Adobe reader actually supports mutt as an email client for the File...Email function. Other choices are Evolution, Kmail, Mozilla, Netscape and the old standby, "mail". Not a big deal, but it sure is nice not having to configure a second MUA just for this. See Edit...Preferences/SendMail.
I work for SCO you insensitive clod
now how about a linux version?
MDI was never really a bad thing, it just needed a little help (tabs).
Yes, and Acrobat doesn't use tabs. It's old-fashioned MDI. Tabs are fine; MDI isn't, because it sidesteps the normal way you manage multiple windows (With the window manager, of course). With MDI the application becomes a window manager within a window manager; quite anoying.
Many people are missing the big picture with Adobe Acrobat. (I freelance graphics) When I send a client a preview of the artwork, I use a combination of XMP, hand-built watermark by myself, and the security of Adobe PDF files. I can choose if someone is allowed to print or not, and I can restrict all modifications to it. So with all three security elements in place, I'm able to manage and control my work, without having to worry about them taking it and not paying.
"No news on open sourcing the client, but they're making a start." Man you people are ungrateful! They make you a version, and it's a free download!!!!! You can't have everything 100% open sourced - and to appear so nasty simply turns people and buisnesses away from Linux.
and prefer a nicely typeset pdf to any shit a browser renders from a html file
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Two reasons.... acrobat reader 7.0 for linux is insanely huge, has serious security issues (tracking and reporting) that I disagree with and only works on the popular commodity platform for linux.
I use Gentoo on high end SUN hardware now (and some low end ultrasparcs) to deliver higher performance and security, if it was open source i would be able to compile it for my platforms.
I guess it's a blessing, I'm not tempted by the latest shiny thing by running on an alternative hardware platform.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But three cheers for Adobe, hopefully they'll take that next step.
Free MacMini
It's only bloated if you have a problem with sacrificing ~100 MB of hard drive space.
That's not the only issue. Bloated programs use more system memory. Loading a huge program will often knock good chunks of your other running tasks into swap memory, or at the very least flush out part of your cached I/O buffers. This can cause a significant hit to your overall system responsiveness, especially on machines without boatloads of physical RAM.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
...would be (as others noted) Photoshop or some other industry standard design app (which would definitely be a good gauge of Adobe and other high-end Windows/Mac software companies view of Linux and the Linux user base) or even better (or nearer and more marketable, perhaps), Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Adobe Acrobat Pro 7 is rather nice, but over the years I always bemoaned the lack of good PDF generation in Linux (at least in the capacity of forms and security, etc. e.g. professional features). With OOo and various PostScript to PDF tools, you can make handsome, print-ready documents in PDF, however more nuanced features are by and large lacking in the linux community. Also, Adobe Acrobat Pro handles typefaces and compression a little be better (wonder why) than most third-party PDF generation apps.
XPDF is great (as everyone is quick to shout) and I use it quite a bit on my linux box, however it is not without its warts and albeit fast, it doesn't handle everything (although it seems to handle 90 some percent of commonly used PDFs out there). My thought is, AA Reader 7 for Linux may not be everyones cup of tea, it does show that Adobe is making an effort in embracing, in a limited regard, Linux users as a marketbase. I think that AA Pro 7 for Linux would be a nice "next step" to bring Linux into the community. Sure, AA Pro 7 (or 6 for that matter) is big and huge and at times slowish, however it has the ability to do everything (which I haven't been able to say about 3rd party PDF generating software). It also is not too shabby to use (especially if you are familiar with how Adobe lays out things in their applications). Although Photoshop or Illustator for Linux would show that Adobe is seeing the market and the need for professional-grade design and editting software of this sort (and Adobe's gear does happen to be the de facto standard, and I would argue for pretty good reason), if Adobe would release a (closed source, commerical) Adobe Acrobat Pro, the Linux community would rightly be on the path to becoming "on par" with Windows and Mac platforms in terms of professional software.
Cause honestly that's what I was waiting for from you guys. I already can read PDF file under linux. Could you please port Photoshop?
Would deleting those plugins on a Windows installation of Acrobat prevent this from working?
Or should I grab the latest PDF spec and start writing "make_pdf_safe.c" to remove all DRM and reporting crap from any PDF?
[OT, mod me accordingly]
:
Plagiarists represent a complex problem.
Forget mod points for a moment, we don't really care about those. After all, there are people who didn't read the original comment and are well served by seeing it reinstated afterwards.
IMHO the inappropriate thing here is to copy someone else's post and take credit for it. So the aim is to keep the information here and break the link between the information and the moron who copied it.
The best way I can think of (yet) is
- provide a link to the original post,
- provide a link to original poster's account,
- let the mods do their job.
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
I don't know what's worse -- the fact that the parent went and found a two-week old post to cut & paste or that you recognized it and new how to link to it.
Yeesh. Someone needs to step outside and take a bio-break.
GhostView was cross-platform and could even open protected PDF's that were normally blocked from editing or printing? It could even extract the text with easier/better methods...
What's wrong with exotic frogs?
you are worng.. obviously..
it keep geting +1 every 10 minutes
-Bob
It is news that they release v7 for linux.
However they've had Acrobat Reader for linux (and other *nixes) for years now. Story makes it sounds like it's their first release..
For those like me who just cannot stand that brightly colored distraction at the top of the app:
Drag any toolbar button on the line with the flashy advertisement down about half its height. This will make a new bar with only that button on it.
Next, drag the rest of the buttons down to the new bar.
Once the last button is moved to the new bar, the old one (and the flashy ad with it!) will disappear and your new ad-less toolbar will move up to replace it.
Locking the toolbars here will prevent it from returning the next time you start the app.
Having a good memory and "stepping" outside are not mutually exclusive :)
:)
To link to it, a simple <a> tag is sufficient... unless you meant "how to get an URL to the original post" ?
If that's the case, may I suggest you try using google harder ? It does not take that much time
In the meantime, here's a quizz for you : will you be able to find from which post he stole his other post in this thread ?
Cheers,
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
`xpdf` works fine.
They don't live _that_ long, and some people lick them without good reasons ;p
Then again I guess it's still better than what he'll get in this life... sheesh.
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
I hope I won't hurt anyone's feelings if I say that until very recently, free-as-in-speech PDF readers sucked badly.
They have been improving wildly in the last year or so, with xpdf 3.0 and its forked library, Poppler. The really good news here is that people now have a real choice between a popular and well-supported proprietary app and free software that is efficient and usable (evince, kpdf...)
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
1. This is old news. I downloaded this a few weeks ago
2. One very good thing:
The 'old' acroread supported the 'continuous' scroll where the top of the next page would scroll up from the bottom as the bottom of the previous was still visible, which was very nice. xpdf couldnt/didnt do that. The one major downside is that mouse/scroll wheel was not supported with it at all. xpdf supports scrollwheel, but wont do continuous scroll. Both of these were quite maddening, either having to pause while waiting for the next page to load with xpdf, or being unable to scroll conveniently - this newest version of acrobat continues to support continuous scroll, yet thankfully now finally supports mousewheel scrolling. I am happy.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/alternate.ht ml
The purpose of copyrights is to advance science and useful arts, not to reward authors.
If rewarding authors for that purpose is required, then they will be rewarded.
Copyrights on binaries however, reward authors while stifling the progress of science and useful arts.
It encourages people to create secretly-operating software that helps them get revenue but does not inspire new works, does not enter the public domain and does not help anyone else in the long run.
It is rediculous that binaries are copyrightable and the law that allows it is actually quite new (from the late 70's) and should be reverted.
Enough is enough - copyrighting binaries must stop.
Adobe haven't released their reader for "Linux", but for "Linux running on x86". Now that other people have begun to realise that not everyone is running Windows, why must Linux people still insist that everyone is using a PC?
Hooray! They've fixed an annoying bug that really bit me (and colleagues) hard.
In full screen mode, presentations made using LaTeX and packages like Prosper would, when you had included graphics, sometimes just have huge black blobs on screen instead of the graphics, or flip the colours. Not what you want when doing presentations. I found a workaround that involved mucking with the default transition but you had to frig it every time.
So the _first_ thing I try with Acroread 7 is my presentation. And woop-de-do it worked.
I dont think xpdf is quite so good in full-screen mode as acroread, and doesn't handle transitions nicely. Not that I want my presentations sliding all over the place, but some people do...
Baz
A horrible tool for reading the most over-used document format ever (insert long argument about which is more over-used: pdf or doc, below) is now available to more people! Yay!
As someone who is not in the publishing business, I have seen maybe two instances where the use of PDF made sense over alternatives like [fucking] HTML or [fucking] JPG.
Please, people, if you dont actually need the exact layout to be preserved, like for instance in absolutely any user manual, refrence manual, any type of manual, a book in general, any form of text document, pretty much anything at all that you're likely to want others to see: Stop using PDF.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I have had the official Adobe PDF viewer availible under Linux since... I don't remember when. I think Adobe reader was availible for Linux before PDFs became popular.
So they are releasing the latest version under Linux. Doesn't seem like earth shattering news to me.
Well, actually, in this case, yes. Acrobat Reader is just that: a READER. It's doesn't hurt them to release it. In fact, it would bolster sales of their actual product: Acrobat. But more importantly, it's supposed to be a cross-platform format, and if they want to support that, they need to make an open, cross-platform reader.
Linux is more than just Linux/x86 on one or two distros, and open source is the easiest way to provide products for all of Linux. So they still have a long way to go before they've even done what this article suggests: releasing a Linux version of Reader.
Acrobat 7 includes spyware right out of the box. When you open certain tagged pdfs, it reports this to a remote server. It appears to just be logging your IP address and reader info -- for now -- but it's javascript based, so any information that Adobe chooses to present to their scripting API is available to it. You can disable javascript, but it will suggest that you re-enable it every time you launch the program, which doesn't constitute disabling as far as any system administrator with lots of users is concerned. There are a variety of hacks that will make this go away. One is listed in the comments of this article:
http://lwn.net/Articles/129729/
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
I _am_ the previous poster, you insensitive clod. ...and by the way, all of your flame are belonging to us
They didn't release it for Linux - they did release for Linux x86 _only_. Only this one architecture is supported which is sad since I use ppc (fortunately there is great kpdf from kde 3.4) :-)
p opulation.pdf
Anyway please be accurate next time.
Next thing is when I last checked adobe acrobat reader 7 for Linux wasn't able to deal with pdfs that acrobat reader 7 for windows was dealing without any problems - example http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/us_population/us_
I wonder if this is an offshoot from the incredible PDF work that Apple has put into OS X. Adobe would be idiots to not leverage that to their advantage on other platforms. I've never seen a PDF read and scrolled through with such efficiency and speed. If memory serves, PDF functionality in OS X is built into the OS at a fairly deep level, allowing not only speedy reads but also the ability to create PDFs from the print dialogs of any application. Definitely one of those under-emphasized features of OS X.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
What is wrong with slashdot?! There is more than one +5 comment and I can still download the darn piece of shit! And I didn't even want it in the first place.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Cross Platform != Open Source
I agree that if they open sourced it then the porting to other archs would be far easier, since other people would do the work for them. They don't 'need' to do that though. Sure, it would be nice, but it's hardly required.
IMHO the inappropriate thing here is to copy someone else's post and take credit for it.
That's the definition of plagarism; if they gave credit, it'd just be a quote.
My sig can beat up your sig.
You can't fill in blanks on PDF forms in anything but acrobat reader...
Acroread 7 also loads really fast for a change.
This might have been funny if we were talking about acroread 5...
But 7.0 loads quickly on 2 different linux boxes (and 1 windows one).
Next there will be a story about Linux dropping BitKeeper.
SEO Firefox Extension
These are advantages only for a particular use, long and/or detailed reading matter, but in that field they rightly outcompete HTML.
are we going to have to read this same tired old story?!!
/. staff!!
Wake up,
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
Just go to /usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat 7/plugins/ (I think that's the folder) and do a
$ chmod 000 PKL.xxxx (or whatever the plugin is that it keeps complaining about). All fixed.
Open sourcing the reader would probably also open source it's pdf rendering engine and it's font handling -- and that is still a very valuable IP.
Maybe (a) it allows them to hide certain functionality that some users might find objectionable or annoying, and which would quickly be stripped out of a forked FOSS codebase, or (b) the quality of the code itself might be an embarassment to Adobe if it wasn't written with the expectation of bearing public scrutiny.
I'm not being facetious with possibility (b), by the way. Contrary to what many assume, proprietary code can be pretty ugly, most often because it's written under tight deadlines and code quality usually isn't a high priority for management. You take a little more care when you put your work out there for all to see. It can be pretty scary for many of us.
They use more Open Source pieces than any technology I think I've ever seen in a single supposedly-commercial package. Granted not all licenses require re-disclosure of modified source, but check out "Patent and Legal Notices" from "Help->About Acrobat Reader 7.0" -- unbelievable! I just wish they said exactly what they borrowed in each case. Do the authors of the OSS s/w they used know it was used?
- support for PDF 1.6
- support for encryption
- much better support for forms
- support for JavaScript
- ...
Next time please actually research what you are talking about.GhostView works just fine and is supplied with KDE as default.
Adobe blew it and can go to hell. I would rather have open source so no spyware/spamware can be installed later.
Have people learned yet that we don't need these big corporations to have a good time with our computers?
Just got to love how the new "Track who is reading your PDFs" works in 7. At least I will know how many people are reading my doco on Linux now.
I like xpdf the best - it's fast!
I only use Acrobat for Linux (version 5) when I have to fill in a form, like for my taxes.
Juln
"No news on open sourcing the client" 'Cause _everything_ for Linux must be open sourced. And 'cause the Windows version is open sourced. ...oh, wait.
It's shaded out on the menu - god damn it!
Anyone any idea why , or how to get it working? This is the only reason I installed it. Cheers.Well, actually, in this case, yes. Acrobat Reader is just that: a READER. It's doesn't hurt them to release it.
Actually, it does. I don't expect them to release source to reader any time soon. The reason is that Reader is a actually a crippleware, even though it's done in rather subtle way: Reader has one amazing feature: it lets you add comments and annotations to a pdf file. But not to every pdf file! You can only annotate pdf file that has annotation "user right" enabled. And the only way to enable that is using Acrobat Professional version! It seems that the api is hidden, and Adobe will not share it with authors of other pdf software.
What it really means is that pdf is not really open format. Most of it is open, but it has some secret parts in it. If they opened reader, they would loose the secret. It would be good thing in my opinion, but they obviously don't share this opinion.
AccountKiller
This one will actually let you fucking SEARCH through PDFs.
Unless kpdf or xpdf let you. If they do, please explain how.
An update from 5.0.5 at last.
Now to see if it's any better than xpdf has gotten in the intervening three years.
Actually kpdf LET'S YOU DO FUCKING SEARCH IN THREE DIFFERENT WAYS
Have a look at http://kpdf.kde.org/ Searching section and a screeshot at http://kpdf.kde.org/screenies/04.searches.png
The binary is not expressive. It does not allow you to make derivative works from it. It does not allow you to see how the expressions made up the whole. It does not survive beyond the platform it was written for.
When copyright expires in 100 years time (it will get there, don't worry...), the binary will not be executable. However, the algorithms in the code may still be useful (even if it is "this is the way they did it in the old days...").
Make binaries protected by copyright ONLY when the source for it is made available too. There is no need to license the code, just show it. The code is still protected by copyright, so you can't make a clone any more than you can make a clone of the binary.
Otherwise we are "buying" nothing with the copyrights we give the author. We are getting bits that will do nothing.
Fucking awesome. I didn't find anything googling around for 'search pdf linux' that didn't say "use pdf2text" or some such. Thanks!
But he's wrong.
Thanks for listening.
Yes, I never said "required".
PDF is not entirely open format. Most of it is, but there are parts that Adobe keep secret.
Example: Using Acrobat v7 Professional, you can enable commenting "usage rights" (I love that term) which will allow people to comment and annotate the pdf document *using reader*!
It has to be done with Acrobat Professional, there does not seem to be any other way, and as far as I know, Adobe will not tell you how it is done. That seems to be one part of pdf that is not open.
I would love it if you could prove me wrong on this!
AccountKiller
Oh, it seems I did, with the word "need". Bad choice of words though. I just meant to say that they seem to underestimate the scale of the problem. They should either commit more resources to supporting other platforms, or open source it to solve the resource problem for them.
document tracking system packaged with it, like the windows 7.0 version as well? Or did they remove it for Linux?
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I found a copy of Linux Acrobat 7.0 a couple of weeks ago, and using it has been a joy as compared to KPDF, Ghostview, and XPDF. Bookmarks and thumbnails work properly, the layouts look very clean (letter spacing is correct, etc.) -- I am so thankful Adobe finally relased the Reader for Linux.
Now if I could just get the complete Adobe Acrobat 7.0 on Linux, I'd be positively ecstatic.
All about me
When they say "for Linux", I assume they mean "for Linux on x86", and that those of us with PPC and Alpha (etc.) are still out of luck.
" Well, if a company says "here is the specification, you have a licence to implement it in whichever way you want as long as it passes standard test A", I don't know, but that actually is the definition of a standard."
Sounds like Java, Flash, and Doc.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Great catch. I just find it astounding that koh couldn't come up with an original thought of any kind. He couldn't even put together a comment that would earn him a "troll" rating. Too bad there is no -2 rating. Since you are already at 5 and the "cut&paste clod" is at -1, so I may as well put my $0.02 this. No sense in wasting mod points on this.
What's up with Adobe? Solaris workstations are still used a lot in the academia and industry where good compatibility with PDF documents is a must. With only three platforms supported and with Linux obviously getting a third-rate support, it seems like we'll soon have to remove "Portable" from PDF.
Parent poster is correct - 7.0.0-2 is an updated build.
Having the reader is about as unexciting as news can possibly be.
I will be excited when companies like Adobe start offering ALL of their products for Linux.
I see this sentiment a lot, and it is surprising for Linux users, who seem to like to think they're more aware of what "the good stuff is" than Windows or Mac users.
If you want to encourage companies to bring graphics products to Linux that offer more power than the GIMP, why don't you pick the companies that offer more power than Photoshop, too?
Both of those products are far less expensive than Photoshop (like, about 1/8th or less!), both offer tons of very useful features you can't get in Photoshop, both offer friendly, timely, human tech support, both have wide open developer programs without hoop jumping, and both of them are faster than Photoshop in key areas. There is very little that Photoshop offers that these programs don't, and a whole lot you can't get in Photoshop that you'll find in them. Both products make the GIMP look like a broken set of crayons, too.
It seems to me that some effort spent trying to get less known, but definitely more powerful apps than Photoshop to move to Linux might be very well spent. But that's just me, and I never was very impressed with how "popular" something was... that's why I run Linux in the first place. Because it is powerful, not popular.
Dispite taking screenshots as "Just Some Guy" noticed, there are tools out there that simply take security out of an PDF.
It is not that difficult, I could even do it myself, it is, however, copyright infriction (and possible DMCA too) as Adobe license states that a tool that uses the PDF specification must obey the security wishes of the document.
But these are just wishes : Gentle decoding program, please do not let the user print me.
But it's up to the decoding program to respect these or not.
And as Perky Goth noted, as there are open source viewers, breaking your "security" is as simple as altering a few lines in the sourcecode.
(like is_printable = read_is_printable(file); to is_printable = true; )
I dont know XMP, but I'm pretty sure that it is easy to alter it too.
So your "security" comes down to crippling the image by adding a watermark and lowering the quality (PDFs have a limited quality for images).
Also, you might catch the casual user that would have liked to print your image but then doesnt know that there is a way to ignore the files wishes or for whom the efford to find a way to ignore them is too much.
That being said, the feature is nice, it is a forceful reminder to the user that they are transgressing the authors wishes, and breaking the licence included in the document if they circumvent it.
But NEVER rely on it and be aware that it can be very easly ignored.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
...with the miriad of open source pdf viewers? I've found them to be much faster than the bloated client Adobe provides. Ok, so you don't get some of the niftier features of the latest PDF spec, but for sharing documents (what the format was invented for) it works perfectly.
I am NaN
Why would they do it? Well, perhaps because they already give it away, as well as publish the specifications? It doesn't seem like they have any concerns about trade secrets or competition, as far as the Reader goes. So, why not open source it?
But it is a silly thing to say. It's clearly not a start towards open source, any more than any other closed-source gratis software is. Reader has always (as long as I can remember) been given away, and has always been closed source. And it's long been available for Linux, even though they skipped version 6.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I hump your leg.
or (c) there are extensions to the PDF spec that Adobe puts in its software (they do) like security, forms, javascript, and other things that are proprietary.
My Linux box is a Macintosh, thank you very much - Debian Sarge for PowerPC, running on a 1996 Power Macintosh 8500. It was too slow to run Mac OS X, but Linux works great on it.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Is it Adobes own GUI toolkit, or is it QT? I can't tell. In Ubuntu, under Gnome the main window and menus look GTKish, but under KDE it looks very QT.
Didn't Adobe licence QT for use in one of their products - think it was Photoshop Album.
Erm, thanks?
I figure us OCDs gotta stick together. >8p
Let Photoshop be next!!!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Man, always trying the hard way eh?
Just go to Edit --> Preferences --> Startup
and check Use only certified plug-ins
also uncheck Splash Screen
Voila! Ultra fast Adobe Reader!!!
xpdf has an icon at the bottom of the screen that looks like binoculars.
I'd prefer using '/' to search, but it works well enough.
sweet - thanks for that.
or simply go to Edit>Preferences>StartUp, and disable "show messages and automatically update.
cd /usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/Reader/intellinux/bin
/usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7c45000)
ldd acroread|grep gt
libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 =>