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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."
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.
How coudl they open source Reader when it embeds some DRM algorithm used for ebooks.
Ludovic
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AFAIK Acrobat Reader 6 was never released for Linux. Because of this Linux users had to either use the deplorable acroread (Reader 5) or other open source pdf viewers like xpdf, gpdf, etc. All of which were far from perfect. Most of which were painful to use. And none of which supported all the features of newer pdf files like editing forms and such.
This Acrobat Reader 7 is significant because its the first quality and full featured Linux pdf viewer. It also shows that Adobe aknowledges the existence and importance of Linux and that the demands and complaints made against them about the situation did not go unanswered.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
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.
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
//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.
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!
On my system, Athlon XP 2500, is much faster a way more stable than 5. 5 crashes on me whenever I do a search and at other random times.
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.
If you've used the program, you'll note that it's extremely complete in terms of interface. Hardly an effort worth taking for just one free app on platforms where a simple display of the .pdf would suffice for most people. I wouldn't count the possibility of future Adobe products for Linux out just yet. They did a great deal of the underlying interface structure--arguably the hardest common ground between programs; they'd be insane not to reuse it.
in my opinion the newest version of kpdf is just as good (if not better) than acrobat reader, however that is for my purposes - I rather an unbloated piece of software that does exactly what I want without all this other crap that tends to get in the way.
However I haven't found a kpdf firefox plugin so I'm using acrobat reader.
I've been using v7 for about a month (unofficial "beta" version). It works fine with my scroll wheel and is done mostly in GTK+2.
This is actually a very useable PDF viewer. I've never been fully comfortable in Acroread 5, XPDF or GSview, and I don't like the pile of dependencies on GPDF and KPDF.
For me, Acroread 7 is the way to go. It'd be nice if it was open, but sometimes we just don't have that luxury...
Great now hopefully I can get at least one PDF viewer that can print this:h arsheet .zip
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/PHB_v35_c
with the labels for the 6 major stats intact.
Can someone who has already downloaded it try this for me?
In every linux PDF viewer I've used it displays on the screen, but when you print it the STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, and CHA labels are blacked out.
I, for one, am actually very pleased with its performance. I just opened a 1364 page pdf that's loaded with graphics in about 3 seconds (FC3 on a 2.8GHz P4). The same doc opened in gpdf takes about 20 seconds and is a real bitch to use since you have to manually type in whatever page number you want to read and whenever you click a page in the table of contents, it jumps to the top of the document (wtf is that? a feature?).
Thank you, Adobe.
> Now if only Adobe would bring Photoshop over as well...
What, and give the Gimp developers the ability to easily run the two side-by-side on their platform of choice, directly compare them, and so forth? I'm not sure the Photoshop team really wants that level of competition. Gimp is already fairly impressive in terms of functionality, but the Gimp developers as a rule don't have Photoshop to compare to, so the interfaces are quite different. (This can be construed as a good thing... certainly it's good for allowing the respective applications to retain their existing user bases, which is much to Adobe's advantage.)
It may be that the Gimp developers would not spend the cash on Photoshop even if they *could* run it on *nix, and so it could be that little or nothing would change. But I can quite readily imagine Adobe's not wanting to chance it.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
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.