F-Secure Suggests Ditching Adobe Reader For Free PDF Viewers

hweimer writes "Yesterday at RSA security conference, F-Secure's chief research officer recommended dropping Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files because of the huge amount of targeted attacks against it. Instead, he pointed to PDFreaders.org, a website maintaining a list of free and open source PDF viewers."

Comments

Already there

[andytrevino]

I've been using Foxit Reader for some time on my aging laptop because of performance issues with Adobe Reader 9, and it works great. http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/

Re:Already there

[Dyinobal]

same here. I switched to foxit ages ago, simply because of adobe being so bloated. It made reading PDFs enjoyable again.

Re:Already there

[omeomi]

Agreed. Small download. Quick start-up. Never had a problem. Foxit rocks.

Re:Already there

[sa1lnr]

I'll second that, been using Foxit for a couple of years now with no complaints.

Re:Already there

[Saint Stephen]

Foxit has a couple of problems with some forms-based PDFs my work gave me, but on the other hand, it lets me save form field values in pdfs where acrobat won't.

It's great; I got sick of the bloat ware and "run all the time! in the background! always show up with checks for prompts for updates every time I open my browser!" that adobe has turned into.

now if foxit only made a flash player

Re:Already there

[CoolCalmChris]

Another happy Foxit user heard from.

Re:Already there

[Kelson]

Ah, but is Foxit Free Software, or merely free software?

Re:Already there

[FlyingBishop]

Actually, the article specifically suggests that Adobe needs to improve its automatic update system, not remove it.

Foxit is getting pretty widely used, and it will be especially vulnerable if it lacks a mechanism to update itself automatically.

Convenience != good architecture.

I'm not sure who are more dangerous, those that don't update because they don't know what updates are, or those that don't update because they're too paranoid about corporations whose software they already use to allow that software to be patched against demonstrated security issues.

That said, Adobe is bloated. It just has nothing to do with running all the time in the background and prompting for updates, but just with generally shitty programming. Anything used for a significant portion of web traffic needs to have a mechanism to automatically retrieve updates, especially if the user is to lazy make sure that their system is up to date and secure.

Re:Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, the latest version of FoxIt demands escalation under Vista. Why exactly?

Re:Already there

[omeomi]

I'm not sure who are more dangerous, those that don't update because they don't know what updates are, or those that don't update because they're too paranoid about corporations whose software they already use to allow that software to be patched against demonstrated security issues.

What about those of us who don't update because we're too lazy?

Re:Already there

[zonky]

Yes, it's so feature compatible with adobe, they've added similar exploits! http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-1104

Re:Already there

[andytrevino]

Free as in beer, not as in speech. The article lists a number of alternatives with varying degrees of maturity and practical utility...

For example, I'm not going to install KDE on Windows just to read PDFs, and if I'm going to recommend an alternative PDF reader to one of my Average Joe friends, customers or relatives I'm not going to have them download one without an installer or from a website whose name has nothing to do with the product (MuPDF) that looks like it was designed circa 1997. Appearance is everything, you know, which is something that I think has greatly contributed to Firefox's success: both the product and the website look smooth, classy and refined.

Re:Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

It's free software, because capitalizing those words is grammatically incorrect.

Re:Already there

[MrPhilby]

Yep for about 2 years here.

Re:Already there

[QRDeNameland]

What about those of us who don't update because we're too lazy?

Then there's those of us who don't update because we've been burnt by updates breaking things way too many times in the past.

Re:Already there

[DanWS6]

I was a firm believer in foxit, until I had to fill out my 1040 and related forms. Some of the fields were just screwed up. I had to cave and install acrobat. I died a little inside that day.

Re:Already there

[Sentry21]

Funny I know, but it's not far off â" Acrobat only bugs me about updating when I'm about to try doing something else. 'I know you said you wanted to see this PDF, but wouldn't you be happier waiting 10 minutes for a software update instead?'

Acrobat needs some method of downloading updates in the background and then just asking you if you want to apply them (yes/no) when you start it, but applying them later, when you're done.

Then again, most apps need to do things like that.

Re:Already there

[toleraen]

Exactly what I don't get of this. When tracking the adobe exploits I saw several for Foxit pop up. The guy is basically advising security through obscurity. Foxit definitely released patches quicker than Adobe, but the vulnerabilities were still there...

Re:Already there

[JoeBuck]

What about those of us who don't update because we're too lazy?

You might be lazy, but your computer isn't; it's been sending out spam 24/7 for a while now.

Re:Already there

[izomiac]

I used to use Foxit, but got a little tired of its adware nature (banner ad, browser toolbar, tons of buttons that only exist to remind you what the free version doesn't have, etc.). So I switched to Sumatra (GPL and much more minimalistic than Foxit). Later, I started taking notes in class using PDF comments. I tried using Foxit again, but commenting is restricted to the Pro version. Plus it crashed every second time I tried to comment the DRM'd lecture notes (that was difficult to figure out since Foxit doesn't indicate if DRM is present). So I switched to PDF-XChange Viewer since it can handle DRM and allows comments. It's similar to Foxit in that it's adware and feature-rich, but it does it with a bit more class IMHO. E.g. there's an option to hide the "Professional" features. Plus, there's a portable version.

Re:Already there

[FRiC]

Until Foxit Reader (at least the Windows version, no experience with other versions) can support Unicode, it will never replace Adobe Reader.

Re:Already there

[blind biker]

And what I find quite important: it renders text quite well. At least I don't see a big difference between how Foxit renders text vs. Acrobat. But, as I was saying in another post, Sumatra does a very bad job - so much so, that I feel slightly nauseated when reading documents with Sumatra.

Re:Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how angst is born.

Re:Already there

[petermgreen]

I'm not sure who are more dangerous, those that don't update because they don't know what updates are, or those that don't update because they're too paranoid about corporations whose software they already use to allow that software to be patched against demonstrated security issues.
What about:
Those who don't update because it would take unreasonable ammounts of time on thier slow connection

Those who don't upgrade because they are afraid vendor incompetance will cause something to break (or have upgraded and then had to downgrade because something broke and are now stuck with the version they downgraded too)

Those who don't update because they simply can't be bothered dealing with all the updators.

IMO all the major windows development houses (including MS themselves) need to get together and use a common automatic updates system with a common setting for deciding update policy (off/check and ask/download and ask/full auto) and maybe an advanced settings box to set different update policies for different products. I think the windows automatic updates system may already support this but if it does then i've never seen anyone other than MS use it.

Re:Already there

[jbn-o]

Foxit Reader is proprietary, no more inspectable or modifiable than Adobe's PDF reader and therefore no more trustworthy than any other proprietary software. No proprietary software is not a good solution to the problems faced with Adobe's proprietary PDF Reader. You are merely jumping from one proprietor to another.

A reasonable recommendation is a FLOSS PDF reader such as Sumatra, Skim, or one of the other fine PDF readers recommended by PDFReaders.org.

Re:Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy is basically advising security through not encouraging a monoculture
 
.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Already there

[hairyfeet]

Uuuhhhhh....I don't know where you get your info from, but Foxit updates itself just fine, has been for awhile. As you can see here it updates itself. Allow me to quote: "To select "Check for Updates", please go to Help > Check for Updates Now > click "Preferences" in the Foxit Reader Updates dialog box > select "Automatically check for Foxit updates". Please note that this option is selected by default."

I can say that I have been using the free version for years and for at least the past two versions it has been advising me of updates to the software. of course like most here I picked Foxit for the lack of bloat and quick startup, but having it update itself is just a nice bonus.

Re:Already there

[linzeal]

Adobe routinely takes 1.5x the amount of memory that foxxit needs to open the same set of documents. Even with 8 gigs of memory that makes a difference when you are dealing with dozens of documents opened at once.

Re:Already there

[mrchaotica]

Exactly -- there's no good Free Software PDF reader for Windows! It shouldnt' be that hard; all you have to do is write a wrapper around Poppler.

Re:Already there

[PopeRatzo]

And not only does Adobe Reader use a lot of resources, but that automatic "updater" is annoying as hell.

Do you all agree that Foxit is the best of show for free PDF reader? I'd like to hear your opinions on some of the others.

Re:Already there

[PopeRatzo]

Funny, the latest version of FoxIt demands escalation under Vista. Why exactly?

Maybe because Microsoft doesn't like free apps? Hey, it's happened before.

Re:Already there

[TooMuchToDo]

Like Firefox? They've perfected the way they do updates.

Re:Already there

[LBt1st]

Foxit Reader has my vote as well. About a month ago I got fed up with Adobe Reader and tried several other PDF readers. FoxIt Reader was the best of the bunch at the time. It's faster, uses less memory and doesn't annoy me.

Re:Already there

[Garrett Fox]

Seems good so far, in terms of memory use. The invitations on installation to install an advertising toolbar and eBay stuff were slightly annoying though, and I'd like to find a way to change the EXE file's subheading. You know, the unchangeable "Foxit Reader, Best reader for everyday use!", seen in the "Open With" dialog. I already installed it, so why the built-in ad?

Re:Already there

[Miseph]

So easy that apparently nobody feels like doing it. I'm a shitty programmer, so why don't you start and I'll try it out once you're done.

Re:Already there

[quacking duck]

My work machine got borked through an Adobe Reader 8.1.2 vulnerability two months ago. Based on Slashdot reader opinions, I opted to try Foxit and Sumatra after rebuilding the system.

Sumatra just isn't there yet--it completely messed up the colours on the cover page of one of our PDFs. Probably something to do with RGB vs CMYK, frankly though I didn't care--Foxit displayed it fine, so it stayed.

Re:Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

I also had to install Acrobat to do my taxes. I felt very dirty afterward and took a shower, but it didn't help.

Re:Already there

[b4dc0d3r]

What's your bug report number?

Re:Already there

[afidel]

Uh, Acrobat updater can already do that. My Acrobat Reader 8 installs on my Citrix servers always pop up when I read a PDF telling me there is an update ready and I have the option to delete them, apply or cancel.

Re:Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a firm believer in foxit, until I had to fill out my 1040 and related forms. Some of the fields were just screwed up. I had to cave and install acrobat. I died a little inside that day.

So install it but make sure it's not the default.

It's handy to have around for the edge-case PDFs, but for general use you can use something else.

Re:Already there

[Giometrix]

I've been using Foxit Reader for some time on my aging laptop because of performance issues with Adobe Reader 9, and it works great.
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/

I didn't switch for the performance reasons, I switched because adobe insists on updating their pdf viewer like every other day.

Re:Already there

[Dyinobal]

I can't say it's 'best of show' because honestly I'm to lazy to download and install a dozen readers and test them. I just grabbed a reader and it turned out it was Foxit and I liked it. If anyone has an opensource solution they can recommend I'd be more than willing to try it. I'm not about to go and look for a replacement for Foxit though, it does it what needs to well.

Re:Already there

[Joce640k]

Yep.

Foxit means I can look at a document without going through five minutes of "An update is available!!" first.

Re:Already there

[GF678]

Stop being so dramatic already. It's software, it's there to achieve a task - use the best tool available to you.

Re:Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

The add can be turned off under the "View" menu. All the invites and toolbar rubbish can also be deactivated. So far, it's looking quite nice.

Re:Already there

[syousef]

I'm not sure who are more dangerous, those that don't update because they don't know what updates are, or those that don't update because they're too paranoid about corporations whose software they already use to allow that software to be patched against demonstrated security issues.

How about those that don't update because they've been bitten too often by the latest and greatest patch breaking an existing system? That's not paranoia, especially since lately it seems companies are more than willing to release an "update" that cripples previously working functionality.

Re:Already there

[andytrevino]

I'll get right on it! Is Visual Basic 6 OK? ;)

Re:Already there

[flyingfsck]

I fill out PDF forms with The Gimp and save it as a png.

Re:Already there

[pyrrhonist]

The add can be turned off under the "View" menu.

This only turns off the ad for the current session. Once you restart, the ad will be back.

Re:Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

Security through obscurity is no security, true, but using an alternative PDF reader you can at the moment considerably reduce the risks of being a target for such an attack.

This has nothing to do with actual security and everything to do with statistics. If your PDF reader is vulnerable to 5% of the attacks out there instead of 95%, there's a difference.

0% is, of course, the best alternative, but whenever a piece of software gains some kind of relevant market share, someone will start to exploit its' weaknesses.

Re:Already there

[slash.duncan]

No kidding.

I look at software like this. If I am expected to agree to a liability waiver, I better be able to examine the code, and/or have someone I trust do so, without an NDA or restrictions on modification, use, and further distribution, should I decide to do so, because I simply don't give up those rights.

If the software cannot provide me the ability to examine the source and/or have others I trust do so without requiring me (or that trusted third party) to agree not to copy, modify and distribute, then I can't sign the liability waiver.

Since in today's litigious climate (at least here in the US) it's insane to distribute software /without/ a liability waiver, at least unless you're charging enough to cover the liability yourself which no bones about it would put it out of /my/ budget range (they do have such software, the fly by wire stuff in planes, etc), that rather neatly makes my decision for me. Proprietaryware folks aren't going to let me (or someone that I trust acting in my behalf) examine their software before I agree to that waiver, nor run it without agreeing to it, and I'm not going to agree to the waiver if it's a black box because I then can't see what I'm agreeing to be responsible for, so the question's pretty much settled. I can't run (most, nearly all, I don't know any that I could) proprietary software even if I'd otherwise want to.

Thus, I don't even have to think about proprietaryware. It's simply not an option on my list, nor could it be on my list. Of course, that means no Adobe PDF reader or Flash, and no nVidia or the like proprietary drivers, either.

(Yet there remains one one single caveat. I still run a now rather old game, Master of Orion, original edition. I agreed on it years before I knew any better and well, in the spirit of my sig, I guess they /are/ pretty much my master at this point. I've continued to copy over the old binaries from one drive to the next for over a decade and a half, now, from MS-DOS 6, to MS Windows 95 and 98's DOS window, to DOSBOX on 32-bit Mandrake Linux when MS drove me away with what they did with eXPrivacy (Thanks, MS! I'm honestly not sure I'd have ever jumped had you not pushed. =:^), to the present, DOSBOX on Gentoo/AMD64 Linux.)

Re:Already there

[olman]

That said, Adobe is bloated. It just has nothing to do with running all the time in the background and prompting for updates, but just with generally shitty programming.

Run all the time is a DIRECT RESULT of the general all around crappiness of the acrobat reader. Foxit kicks up in seconds without any background "quick start" applet. And so should acrobat.

The whole "quick start" background applet garbage appeared in acrobat 6, I think, when the startup time just got too damn bad.

Actually you can trim acrobat itself to start pretty quickly with the preload turned off. There's amazing amount of cruft in the plugins most people have no use for whatsoever. It's just not in the UI, but you can simply move plugin files to another folder.

I'd rather just use foxit. When they take enough demographic Adobe is probably forced to fix their crummy software, just like MS had to do with IE.

Re:Already there

[remmelt]

Or worse, burnt by updates which are actually downgrades, removing functionality and replacing it with DRM.

Re:Already there

[dontclapthrowmoney]

I agree that Master of Orion is totally worth violating your non-proprietary-only-software principles for. Even worthy of an OT comment.

Re:Already there

[c0p0n]

I use Foxit as well, and Okular at home. Foxit is good, but I do have a complaint about it. Lengthy documents (60 pages) take an eternity to be sent to the printer. In this case I have no choice but to use Adobe to print.

Re:Already there

[entgod]

I haven't used foxit very much but of the pdf readers I've tried (evince, kpdf, epdfview, xpdf), evince evince seems to behave closest to what I would expect a pdf/document reader to behave.

Re:Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to mention a reason?

Re:Already there

[ax13]

try using PDFXviewer - it could be a solution to your problems. Switched from acrobat reader to it and never looked back!

Re:Already there

[emm-tee]

Like Firefox? They've perfected the way they do updates.

Unless you use Windows XP and don't run as administrator.

Updates don't work for non-administrator accounts. This resulted failures where an update had been downloaded but could not be applied.

The Firefox developers "fixed" this issue by not even notifying the user when updates are available.

Re:Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe is far ahead of Foxit in the security realm. As soon as Acrobat detects the user attempting to open any possible malware vector, such as a PDF, it immediately freezes the machine to prevent infection.

I don't see how you could improve on that.

Re:Already there

[hesaigo999ca]

Great now the secret is out, watch all the new attacks be against foxit...lol

Re:Already there

[windsurfer619]

Updates don't work for non-administrator accounts... The Firefox developers "fixed" this issue by not even notifying the user when updates are available.

As it should be. The system administrator should be responsible for updating software, especially if the user can't do it themselves.

Re:Already there

[drinkypoo]

Anything used for a significant portion of web traffic needs to have a mechanism to automatically retrieve updates, especially if the user is to lazy make sure that their system is up to date and secure.

If you install mozplugger on Ubuntu (at least on Jaunty... the past is in the past!) then evince, kpdf, or xpdf (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu) will be used to view PDFs in your browser. The OS has a facility to update these PDF viewers. Problem solved! :)

(I just showed my lady evince running in my firefox viewing a PDF. She said she's "always" had problems with PDFs. I told her it was just one more problem that would go away when she runs Linux, but she said nothing. Old habits die hard, I guess.)

Re:Already there

[mrchaotica]

I'm busy with school for a little while longer. But if I end up having trouble finding a job, maybe....

Re:Already there

[Lord Ender]

Unless they support the same PDF functionality as their proprietary cousins, they aren't alternatives.

The FOSS Flash player, for example, is simply not an alternative to Adobe flash, because it doesn't work with a large quantity of flash files.

Re:Already there

[behindthewall]

I learned of Skim a few months ago, and it looks like a great tool. Extensive navigation and annotation abilities, with the annotations saved separately (merging them into the PDF file is also supported). Exactly what I want for migrating to more on-screen research and study.

Unfortunately, it is dependent upon Mac OS PDF handling libraries. I've been wishing/hoping something similar will appear that is cross platform. Some recent news about Python-based PDF libraries (I forget the specific names, at the moment) has perked my interest/hope a bit.

I hope something does develop. Or that I generate enough spare cash to finally put down for a Mac. (Suboptimal: I don't want to be tied to Apple's libraries.)

Re:Already there

[AmiMoJo]

The reason I like Firefox updates is because they don't try to force new "features" on you that you don't want. They just supply security fixes.

Okay, so every now and then they drop support for old versions which does force you to upgrade, but at least they are trying to cut down on bloat and bad behaviour, unlike Adobe Reader which just gets worse with every version.

Re:Already there

[AmiMoJo]

I just wish people would stop trying to use a format designed for printed documents to do electronic data collection. What's wrong with a web site?

Re:Already there

[AmiMoJo]

Check out Sumatra PDF. It's open source and uses open source PDF rendering engines, which are generally a lot more secure since they are peer reviewed and fixed immediately if a problem is found.

Re:Already there

[DanWS6]

Call me crazy, but I don't trust the US government to create a secure and bug free website for entering my personal information. Yes, that is correct, I'd rather send it via the USPS.

Re:Already there

[AmiMoJo]

What makes you think that using the postal service is any safer? Your details will be entered electronically at the other end anyway, probably by someone earning minimum wage or even by someone working overseas. There have been a lot of cases of staff at Indian call centres selling personal information of UK residents, and I imaging US citizens are any safer. Our government regularly looses millions of people's information on laptops and CDs in the post anyway.

Sadly these days you pretty much just have to accept that your personal info is going to be abused if you want to vote, get health care, own a TV license, get a driving license, have a bank account/credit card, claim any kind of benefit etc. In fact, since all children are now registered on databases I'd say it's pretty much impossible to avoid these days.

Re:Already there

[jgrahn]

Do you all agree that Foxit is the best of show for free PDF reader?

Free as in beer, it seems (based on its Wikipedia entry). That's a showstopper for some of us. (And the shoddy Linux support doesn't help either. "i386"? My main systems are AMD64 and ppc.)

Re:Already there

[Threni]

> Foxit Reader is proprietary, no more inspectable or modifiable than Adobe's PDF reader and therefore no more trustworthy than any other proprietary software. No
> proprietary software is not a good solution to the problems faced with Adobe's proprietary PDF Reader. You are merely jumping from one proprietor to another.

It's also not free. If you're going to use a non-free PDF app you might as well use one you can cut and paste from. Foxit is great because the cut-down free version is quite small and fast, but it's not without its limitations.

Re:Already there

[Gnavpot]

As it should be. The system administrator should be responsible for updating software, especially if the user can't do it themselves.

Oh, you think that those are two different persons?

No, the unprivileged user is just a sane system administrator doing stuff which doesn't require admin privileges. This user would very much like to be informed that it may be time to login as admin to receive a Firefox update.

Re:Already there

[chrispitude]

Another vote for Foxit.

Re:Already there

[Fluffy Bunnies]

I used it on my old computer, but it dropped the ball on a few files I really needed to print (and get right). As a result, I haven't bothered installing Foxit on my current computer yet, and as Adobe Reader isn't bloated enough to have any negative effects on it, I might not.

The problems were with a form written in Japanese (characters displayed right, but the text bled into the margins) and some government forms that had lots of interactive crap.

Re:Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

I've considered trying foxit, but I've been a little wary about their marketing schemes. The features I would want (ability to save a filled form) seem to only be in the paid version. I don't necessarily object to the idea, but I don't like sending my credit card number to companies of unknown reputation, or having to purchase licenses (at $40/pop) for each computer, or keeping track of license codes.

They also offer a link to "Trialpay" as a "free" way to get their software. (Trialpay registers you for some number of "offers from our affiliates".) Sounds like an affiliate scam, and I'm not sure I'd trust a company willing to link to them.

Not Much Cross-Platform

[Kelson]

It's interesting that of the 8 alternatives mentioned, only Okular is listed as being available across the board on Windows, Mac OS X, and (as they put it), "Free Operating Systems." (Linux, BSD, etc.) Even so, it involves installing KDE on top of Windows or Mac OS X, but at least it can be done.

The only two-platform reader, Yap, appears to be based on GNUStep, and I don't actually see a Windows download on the web page.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[compro01]

Doesn't Apple have their own non-adobe pdf reader built into OS X?

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[Kelson]

Doesn't Apple have their own non-adobe pdf reader built into OS X?

Yes, Preview can read PDFs (among many other formats) well enough that I didn't even install Adobe Reader when I bought a new MacBook a few months ago. Admittedly I'm not sure how well it handles forms, but it has no problems with static PDF files.

Of course, I doubt it's open source/free software, so it wouldn't be on this list anyway.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[dov_0]

I've been using Evince on Linux for years now. No dramas. Runs about 10 times faster than the Adobe Reader as well.

Does whether a particular reader is cross-platform really matter? Most people only seem to use the zoom in/out, scroll up/down and preview pane functions anyway. Not a lot to figure out on a different system...

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[aristotle-dude]

OS X comes with Preview which handles a variety of formats including multiple page PDF documents. In fact, the imaging system is based on PDF.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[Kelson]

Does whether a particular reader is cross-platform really matter? Most people only seem to use the zoom in/out, scroll up/down and preview pane functions anyway. Not a lot to figure out on a different system...

Good point. Now that I think about it, I've been using Evince on Linux, Preview on Mac OS, and Adobe on Windows for quite a while.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[vux984]

Of course, I doubt it's open source/free software, so it wouldn't be on this list anyway.

Well, its effectively 'free' in the sense that any one who has the operating system that runs it already owns a copy.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[John Whitley]

Yes. There's also Skim for OS X, which is far and away my favorite PDF reader for any platform. It's actually designed by and for people who really want to read, quickly search, and annotate PDFs.

Here are two of Skim's great features that I'd love to to see in other PDF readers:

1. Fast search with great presentation. Skim's PDF text search is blazing fast, provides a concise one-hit per line view, as well as thumbnails of the page around the search target on mouse hover. The thumbs are great for quickly winnowing down to the correct hit; you often don't need to even read the text, just the "look" is enough to know you've got the right thing.
2. The ability to easily spin off small windows frozen to a part of a page -- great for popping open a diagram or other material referenced across multiple pages of a text.

I do believe that Skim relies heavily on various OS X frameworks (e.g. for PDF rendering, Spotlight support for search, etc.). That definitely goes to show the value of providing functionality via general, well-conceived and well-implemented frameworks instead of being wrapped up inside of monolithic applications.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[buchner.johannes]

The websites are the horror from a windows end-user point of view.

Okular: no download, build descriptions?
MuPDF: A parser description?
Yap: That screenshot ...
Sumatra PDF: Looks good.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[icebraining]

I'd like to bind/bookmark certan pages to keys like CTRL+1,2,3.. but besides that evince works fine, and I can embed it in Firefox using mozplugger.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[John Hasler]

> The websites are the horror from a windows end-user point of view.

Perhaps you should consider getting your operating system from an organization that does not require you to download such fundamental applications as a PDF viewer from a third party.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[pete-classic]

Forms support is decent, but not perfect. I reported a couple of bugs I ran into filling out my tax forms this year. Specifically, I couldn't save a PDF in Adobe Reader that had form data already saved in it with Preview. And the digits didn't align correctly in the bank routing and account number fields.

I use it frequently. My only other gripe is that the search is brain-dead. (It "ors" all the search terms. which is never what I want. Putting an "AND" between them doesn't help :-/)

It might sound like I don't like it, but these are actually my only complaints. Very solid app.

It's also worth noting that PDF export is built right into the print subsystem. No goofy third party print drivers. No need for individual apps to understand PDF.

-Peter

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[LordLimecat]

You honestly wouldnt have a problem with microsoft bundling their own PDF reader with their OS? More to the point, dont you think that people would start yelling about bloat and whatnot if they did?

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[blind biker]

I tried Sumatra (newest version) and while it's installed size is small, compared to the features it offers, it's bloated (ok, it's not bloated if you compare to Adobe, but it is compared to Foxit). But that's not the real problem with Sumatra: the gravest issue is the rendering: I thought I'll get a headache reading text rendered by Sumatra. It was very unpleasant at any zoom level.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[BlackSabbath]

Whole-heartedly agree. Skim has made getting through my Master's degree much easier. The ability to highlight (markup in many ways) and add text notes directly on the page make this awesome.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried using QuickView to view PDFs ?

It's tens of times faster than any dedicated PDF viewer since you don't have to load the program :)

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[mjwx]

Sumatra PDF: Looks good.

I switched from Foxit to Sumatra PDF when the flashing banner ad in Foxit became too annoying. Sumatra handles displaying PDF's on a Windows box far better and doesn't seem to have the same issues when printing a colour PDF, Foxit would take 5 minutes to send it to the printer. Sumatra doesn't do everything, its a small light PDF viewer that has a quick load time, which is exactly what most people are after with a PDF viewer.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[Hatta]

They package text, video, and image viewers. Where is the line? Personally, I'd like to see Microsoft stop bundling file managers so we can get some real competition on that front.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[PopeRatzo]

Perhaps you should consider getting your operating system from an organization that does not require you to download such fundamental applications as a PDF viewer from a third party.

Hey, I don't want my OS coming with ANY apps, how about that? Just run my programs and stay out of my way.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[farfield]

I also use Evince.

The only problem I've had was that Royal Mail changed their pdf outputs for online postage so that when viewed they were obscured by the word "Sample" which was supposed to disappear when printed and didn't. My solution was to stop using Royal Mail's online service.

Evince is so much better than Adobe Reader, for my needs.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[smcdow]

Preview is pretty great for viewing PDFs, but I just spent a frustrating two hours trying to get a PDF document to print correctly from Preview. The bottom of the document was getting chopped off. I tried scaling down the document, but Preview prints bottom-justified -- so the bottom of the document was still cut off no matter how much I scaled it down. I tried all kinds of tricks, but I couldn't make it work.

So, I finally gave up and installed Adobe Reader, and it printed the document correctly the first time out.

The moral of my story: Preview for viewing, Adobe for printing.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[mike260]

Dude, a fresh install of the OS eats 6 Gb of HDD. You think that the 'bloated' argument is even in-play?

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[Brett Buck]

That's odd. I have been using Preview as the printing application for just about everything, because it had less issues than anything else I tried.

      I, too, never bothered to install Acrobat Reader on any of my OS X machines.

        Brett

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[fermion]

For cross platform I run XPDF. It does most of what I do. On the mac, of course, there is Preview. One of the reason to have a mac. Capture parts of the PDF and save to many formats with two key strokes. Reorder and combine. Scale graphical stuff. For windows I do use Adobe, because, why not. The other stuff is not that much better. Of course I have to download a file converter if I want to print to PDF from most windows apps. That kind of sucks.

And this is at the crux of your cross platfomr question. There is no incentive for MS to promote such a solution. MS always wanted MS Office to the cross platform solution. The only reason it isn't is because the format has not been stable over time, so there is no way to know a person receiving a document can actually read it. MS has never given up on the hope it would be winner in this battle, even though anyone who does not run MS knows it is a joke.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[Anonymous Coward]

we need to start a movement to compile some of these more commonly used programs with static linking (i think, any real programmers care to weigh in?) so taht we can have, say, okular without ALL the KDE libraries. just the functions/objects whatever out of the libraries that okular needs. bigger okular yes, but smaller overhead on MacOS or windows.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[Anonymous Coward]

"You already paid for it." != "free" in any sense of the word.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[xouumalperxe]

My understanding of the matter is that, since the display subsystem is a descendant of NeXT's Display PostScript, and is essentially a subset of PDF, pdf output runs deeper than "built into the print subsystem".

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[smallfries]

The only annoying omission is that some viewers lack page forward, like page down but go to the same point on the next page. This is really useful when preparing drafts and the screen is set to zoom in past the margins.

I can't really call the other missing feature an omission as I haven't found a viewer that does it yet, but it is on my wishlist. Most viewers do 2-up viewing, but they lock the parity - ie odd pages and even pages are always in the same place and you step through the document two pages at a time. Can somebody somewhere implement an n-up view that steps through one page at a time? It's not hard, I had to write a script that faked it once ....

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[windsurfer619]

That definitely goes to show the value of providing functionality via general, well-conceived and well-implemented frameworks instead of being wrapped up inside of monolithic applications.

As someone that doesn't want or have the macintosh os, that value is 0..

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[vux984]

"You already paid for it." != "free" in any sense of the word.

If you've already paid for it, and you are now choosing between multiple tools, the ones you have ALREADY PAID for are as good as free ones.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I am a developer for a living and even I don't like building from source. I just want to download and go. Put a link off the main page where in two clicks I can be downloading the most recent version.

The Yap and Sumatra pages are atrocious.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[Artifex]

"You already paid for it." != "free" in any sense of the word.

If you've already paid for it, and you are now choosing between multiple tools, the ones you have ALREADY PAID for are as good as free ones.

From the website: "Other proprietary alternatives to Adobe's PDF reader also exist, but like it, their internal working is a a trade secret and these programs do not respect your right to control your own privacy and data."

They're "as good" as long as these issues don't matter to you.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[Artifex]

You honestly wouldnt have a problem with microsoft bundling their own PDF reader with their OS? More to the point, dont you think that people would start yelling about bloat and whatnot if they did?

I wouldn't have a problem, as long as they weren't making it hard for people to install their own alternatives. And Apple bundles a level of PDF reading and creation with OS X.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[larkost]

This was true for MacOS X Server 1.0 (came out 6 months or more before MacOS X client), but by the time MacOS X rolled out the Display PostScript had largely been architected out of the actual display model (in favor of things that were easier to hardware accelerate).

However, there is still of lot of the machinery there, which is what makes is so easy for an application to snap out PDF represntations of any non-custom NSView with a single call: dataWithPDFInsideRect.

Re:Not Much Cross-Platform

[Nightspirit]

No one cares (except for a few loudmouths on slashdot) about bloat, and the term is meaningless. Opera has more features (out of the box) than any other browser yet is smaller and often faster.

If MS can include basic cd burning in win7, I don't see why they can't include basic pdf support. The reader couldn't possibly be any worse than acrobat.

They all suck

[Anonymous Coward]

acroread is the only decent pdf viewer for linux.

Re:They all suck

[MrEricSir]

Troll or not, this is absolutely correct. Acroread is bloated and slow, but it's the only reader that can display complex documents correctly. The other viewers are simply not feature-complete.

Re:They all suck

[Vexorian]

I am sorry, but I have been using... ... err, I am not even sure what its name is, whatever PDF reader comes by default in ubuntu, and it works just great? All I need when reading a PDF is... zoom, page view, and table of contents... Rendering correctly? Maybe all the docens of ebooks I tried never used any complex PDF feature... I actually think that's a good thing though...

Re:They all suck

[mike260]

'Feature-complete' is a bug, not a feature in this instance. Embedding audio, video, SWF and 3D in PDFs is a truly retarded notion, and using acroread enables and encourages it.

The more people who use viewers that ignore these misbegotten 'features', the sooner they'll shrivel up and blow away.

Re:They all suck

[lahvak]

Embedding audio, video, SWF and 3D in PDFs is a truly retarded notion

Why? Just because your favorite pdf reader does not support it, you label it retarded? That's like when windows apologists say that virtual desktops and sloppy focus are retarded.

I hope that at some point of time free pdf readers will start supporting at least some of these features and I will be able to get rid of adobe reader.

Re:They all suck

[MrEricSir]

Dude,the free PDF readers can't even render background images correctly. I don't think they will be supporting the mentally-challenged features anytime soon when they can't even get the basics right.

Helpfully

[Anonymous Coward]

F-Secure posted a PDF with exploits to uninstall Adobe Reader and install a new free reader.

Re:Helpfully

[AmiMoJo]

I'd settle for a PDF that used the exploit to prevent Reader from rendering it properly. Then I could sent it to people who complain that their Word documents don't look right on my PC in OpenOffice, and complain to them that my PDFs don't look right in their buggy PDF reader :)

Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[gilgongo]

Acrobat utterly takes the biscuit when it comes to being the most execrably awful, arrogant, bloated, buggy, piece of software ever made, ever. And that's in a world where Microsoft exists as well.

But as if that isn't bad enough, it ALSO ranks as the most tragic irony in *all* *computing* *history* that such a screamingly, revoltingly, tear-out-your-hair-and-become-a-monk awful software is essentially based on an open standard. I'll say that again: PDF is an *open* ISO standard. HOW did Adobe rape and strangle it to death like they did? If anyone wants an example of how unspeakably evil marketing and sharp practices can be, they need look no further than Adobe Acrobat.

If I never used Acrobat ever again it would be too soon.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[conspirator57]

But I thought the value proposition in closed-source, pay software was that it was more robust, with better responsiveness to the needs of the customer base, etc...

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[Anonymous Coward]

the most execrably awful, arrogant, bloated, buggy, piece of software ever made, ever.

It's called Realplayer.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[UncleTogie]

You really think so? Let me introduce you to my Buddy, Bonzi....

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a malware imho.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[lymond01]

It's about profit. These days, you can't charge people $40 (or $140) per copy to go from Acrobat 5 to Acrobat 5.01, with security fixes. You need another version with added features, better usability, etc, otherwise people won't see the value in shelling out for the new version, and you won't make any money. It's easier to add then it is to recreate, so you get bloated software.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[5of0]

But it's malware that sings! That right there makes the difference.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[blind biker]

Acrobat Reader is pretty universally despised. I was very surprised when I saw, on bittorrent, a WinXP iso slipstreamed with Adobe Acrobat. Oh well - some people are just, you know, crazy.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[H0p313ss]

Acrobat utterly takes the biscuit when it comes to being the most execrably awful, arrogant, bloated, buggy, piece of software ever made, ever.

Clearly you have not used anything Lotus has shipped in the past decade.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[spinkham]

Acrobat utterly takes the biscuit when it comes to being the most execrably awful, arrogant, bloated, buggy, piece of software ever made, ever. And that's in a world where Microsoft exists as well.

I see you never used Visual SourceSafe.

But yes, Acrobat sucks.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[petermgreen]

I'll say that again: PDF is an *open* ISO standard.
Afaict pdf is an adobe standard that they later submitted to ISO.

BTW do any of the non-adobe pdf readers you have tried offer the following.

1: automatic display of the "bookmarks" pane if the pdf requests it. With larger pdfs that pane is generally the main means of navigation and having to open it manually is annoying.
2: fast response when dealing with large pdf's and/or high zoom levels.
3: similar selection of toolbar buttons (zoom, page switch, hand tool/select text/select image, printing etc) to acrobat
4: ability to print multiple pages per sheet
5: ability to scale from pdf paper size to the paper size I have in my printer.
6: support for at least windows and lintel

features that acrobat reader doesnt have like the ability to copy diagrams as vector images rather than bitmaps would be a bonus.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[Anonymous Coward]

If I never used Acrobat ever again it would be too soon.

Well if you would, could you compare it with Evince and KPDF and KGhostView, and then possibly explain to me why the hell they're so much slower than "the most execrably awful, arrogant, bloated, buggy, piece of software ever made, ever"?

That's on Ubuntu 8.04. Obviously Acrobat wasn't my first attempt to find better, and I really wasn't expecting Acrobat 9 to be any good because everyone says it's such shit. But, sorry, I've got night and day difference here. With A9 the next page of a document is just bloody loaded -- no waiting around, no broken flow. I don't know why the others don't do that, and I'm sincerely curious. Why is my experience the polar opposite of 'slashdot wisdom'? Did Adobe clean up A9 and nobody noticed?

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[hairyfeet]

Oh please! I too hate the stench that is Acrobat(I give Foxit to my customers and use it myself) but if you think it is the worst you obviously didn't live through the total evil that was...dum dum dum...Realplayer EEEK! Now THERE was some truly evil, take over every damned thing, buggy as hell and report back all your files to the mothership, uber pile of suck software! Only slightly less evil(but even more satanic than Acrobat) was the scourge that was known as the great Comet Cursor plague of the late 90s. Yes, please turn my damned cursor into a butterfly that craps sunshine while slowing my PC to a crawl. Now THAT was evil,buddy! And speaking of buddies, do I even need to mention a certain monkey that had people running into my shop going "Please just KILL IT! I can't take anymore!"

So while I think the scourge of using PDF where it doesn't belong(I have a graphic artist pulling his hair out now because PHBs keep sending him horribly formatted PDF files and expecting good graphics to come from them) it pales in comparison to some of the true horrors we old timers have been forced to suffer. Being forced to use the above with an Earthlink or AOHell connection should be listed as torture under the Geneva convention! It is inhumane I tell ya! Adobe bloat feels like heaven in comparison!

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[some_guy_88]

I agree, but there is one thing Acrobat does that the other free PDF viewers I have tried don't do as well. Zooming.

Poppler and xpdf can only zoom to 400% where as Acrobat can go much further. Its rarely a problem but once I got a pdf which had 10 pages compacted into 1 and I had to view it on my friend's windows machine. (I'm not installing that Acrobat crap on my pc)

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called Realplayer.

No, you only thought Realplayer was the most execrably awful, arrogant, bloated, buggy, piece of software ever made, ever, because you were running it on Vista.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[Philip_the_physicist]

Evince is certainly more responsive than A8 on the same system, and can search much more quickly. I tend to read in continuous mode, so the next page is already cached before I scroll to it in most readers, but I admit that when jumping to pages acroread 8 is faster to show the page. I would hazard a guess that acrobat pre-renders unseen pages, which would explain its much higher footprint.

I haven't used KPDF since I was messing around with KDE4.0, when it seemed to cause major wedging, but KPDF/KDE3 was acceptable. GhostView is better than evince for clever PS files, although I much prefer Evince's user interface, and it works fine for ordinary PS documents (without animation etc.) and DJVU (used for ebooks). I haven't really used Orakular, since I am not a KDE user.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[Anonymous Coward]

KPDF was fine until KDE 3.5.10 (or mabye 3.5.9) and then it started sucking so horribly that I switched to Foxit 3 in wine.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[Anonymous Coward]

the most execrably awful, arrogant, bloated, buggy, piece of software ever made, ever.

iTunes it is. The gui is a mess, which tries to replace the wheel with a square and the whole sw is mostly blocked for a unpredictable amount of time after each operation. And sure, the Safari is essential part of each itunes update, at least for Apple.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[brucmack]

Actually, Lotus software has improved greatly over the last decade, at least in terms of features and usability. You could argue that the newer Notes clients are bloated, but the recent point releases have greatly lowered the memory footprint, and since it's based on Eclipse some bloat is unavoidable. On the server side, they have only become more efficient for the past few release cycles - it's a situation where you want to upgrade the server software on old hardware, because it will reduce resource usage.

I'd say the company I have had the most problems with is Symantec. Everything they acquire seems to turn to shit.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[makomk]

I think okular meets most of your requirements, though I haven't tested its printing capabilities very much. The trouble is, Windows is noticeably a second-class platform for it - installing it is a pain that drags in a large chunk of KDE, and printing doesn't work.

So, if the Windows release of Okular gets fixed (which supposedly will happen), that's probably your best choice.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[baker_tony]

For everyone who uses SourceSafe, switch to SourceVault. I made the switch a few years ago and wish I made the change years before that. I can't believe I actually managed to stay sane while using SourceSafe over VPN for the time I did!

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[Auxbuss]

Actually, you can go back well over a decade.

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[H0p313ss]

Yes they have improved, but calling Acrobat "most execrably awful, arrogant, bloated, buggy, piece of software ever made, ever" is blatantly unfair when you use current versions of both side by side.

(I'd be a lot happier if Symphony shipped an up-to-date version of Open Office and it took less time to start ...)

Re:Acrobat: The Worlds Worst Software

[gilgongo]

Acrobat utterly takes the biscuit when it comes to being the most execrably awful, arrogant, bloated, buggy, piece of software ever made, ever. And that's in a world where Microsoft exists as well.

I see you never used Visual SourceSafe.

But yes, Acrobat sucks.

Au contraire! Indeed I have used VSS - rather a lot. It's very shit indeed, but at least it doesn't bug me to update it every few weeks WHILE I'm working, with a update notice window that steals focus, and refuses to take "cancel" for an answer, and then takes 20mins to do the deed, THEN tells me to re-start my machine.

That, my friend is The Acrobat Experience (tm).

1 word

[Anonymous Coward]

Monoculture.

It's always bad & that's why standards are good.

For those on the go

[compro01]

Sumatra PDF is also available in a portable format.

Re:For those on the go

[drizek]

I was introduced to Sumatra from portable apps and now use it instead of FoxIt. It does have a few issues here and there, but it seems to work better.

nice that there was an MS rep there to pay him too

[Locutus]

using this guys logic, he should be saying to dump Microsoft and use another OS due to the large number of breakins on Windows boxes. Notice I didn't say attacks because attacks do not mean security failure. I'll bet he picked his words, or MS did, for legal reasons.

anyways, Microsoft and RSA have been buddy buddies for a few years now so it's no wonder MS has the RSA picking on Adobe. Adobe has almost as large a distribution channel as Microsoft and that makes Adobe a big target. Add to it Adobe's Flash and the target is as large as the one on Tux.

LoB

I agree with the logic...

[erroneus]

"...because of the huge amount of targeted attacks against it."

So let's also put forward the same suggestion directed at Windows?

How about a security review?

[Burdell]

Being the most targeted is not a good reason to switch (being the most exploited may be). However, rather than say "acroread sucks, try something else", shouldn't a security company actually check the security of the alternatives? Alternative does not automatically imply better; how do I know that the alternatives are not worse?

How many of the alternatives implement all the features require (and implement them securely)? Viewing an owner's guide PDF or some such isn't a big deal (I'd hope they can all do that); I need to know if all the form handling works correctly (because I need to use that).

Re:How about a security review?

[JoeBuck]

The very existence of a huge number of features means that there will be more security bugs. Also, black hats tend to focus their attacks on the dominant player, unless there's a #2 that's super-easy to beat. Obscurity isn't sufficient to provide security but it does help.

It's true that many of the alternatives lack certain features, but most PDF files don't use those features either. You can use a simpler reader except in cases where you need all the features.

Re:How about a security review?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody here needs to read some review by a security company telling them how bad Acrobat sucks.

When does viewing something designed to be print friendly need multiple layer security and forms. Print it and snail mail them otherwise use a real application designed to do your taxes.

No wonder bot nets run a muck these days.

Re:How about a security review?

[mrbene]

I think F-Secure's unofficial stance is outlined best in their blog from a while back:

we're not recommending Foxit. We're not recommending Sumatra. Or PDF-Xchange, CoolPDF or eXPert PDF. Instead, we recommend users to find their own Adobe Reader replacement. This way we get more heterogeneous userbase, which is a good idea security-wise.

I dropped Adobe PDF reader for a different reason

[bogaboga]

"Yesterday at RSA security conference, F-Secure's chief research officer recommended dropping Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files because of the huge amount of targeted attacks against it.

I used to use Adobe's PDF reader but while running Windows XP, I got a message prompting me to upgrade my Adobe reader to the latest.

I attempted to and the downloaded file was quite small. On completing the installation, I found out that I was stuck with a directory heavy at 200MB! Uninstalling the extras did not help matters.

Later on, I discovered Foxit Reader. I haven't looked back and I am not worried about Adobe misbehaving for I know the would not like Microsoft to gain any traction with their XPS format.

Adobe: The Worlds Worst Software Company

[Anonymous Coward]

That was my response to the dreamweaver CS3 install that dumped over 800 meg of bolt-on garbarge and two new services BEFORE starting the actual dreamweaver install.

And the new-and-improved dreamweaver was almost exactly the same as the macromedia version. They added a new CSS selector and a new tab for their adobe ajax framework. And they broke the best interakt extension. So the product went backwards, despite trending towards epic MS levels of application footprint.

They acquired the interackt folks and I think CS4 suckers are still waiting for the supported port.

Everything adobe touches turns to shit if you ask me.

Re:Adobe: The Worlds Worst Software Company

[larry bagina]

I agree.

Re:Adobe: The Worlds Worst Software Company

[AmiMoJo]

Unfortunately it's not just the software itself, but the output too. Have you ever examined a Dreamweaver generated web page? If you thought Word documents were bad...

Which PDF reader for Linux handles forms the best?

[Just Brew It!]

Earlier this month while doing my US Federal taxes, I ended up installing the Windows version of Acrobat Reader 8 under Wine just to fill in the IRS PDF-based tax forms. None of the other readers I tried were both A) capable of handling the IRS forms correctly; and B) stable enough on Ubuntu 8.10 to actually use. Other readers I tried included Evince, another Open Source one (I forget which), and several versions of Acrobat Reader for Linux (both from the Ubuntu restricted repo and direct from Adobe).

The Windows version under Wine was an iffy proposition at best, but I was able to get it working eventually. The installers for 7.x and 9.x bombed outright; 8.x installed, but wouldn't let you click past the EULA! Once past the EULA issue (regedit to the rescue!), 8.x on Wine worked OK. Workable, but far from an ideal solution...

What about DRM PDFs?

[Orion Blastar]

I have a ton of DRM protected eBooks from my college. They only work in Adobe Acrobat Reader. How do I remove the DRM, or would removing the DRM so that I can use them in a third party PDF viewer be a violation of my license with the college and publishers?

I really don't want to lose my eBook library, but I don't want to get infected either.

Re:What about DRM PDFs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Open the file as a text file and look for the comment that says something like it is a violation of the DMCA to remove the following lines. Remove the following lines. Repeat. This is of course assuming that you don't think it's a violation of the DMCA to remove the lines in question.

Re:What about DRM PDFs?

[John Hasler]

> ...would removing the DRM so that I can use them in a third party PDF viewer be a
> violation of my license with the college and publishers?

Why don't you read the license and find out? It certainly would not be infringement of the copyrights.

Re:What about DRM PDFs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Search for ineptpdf.pyw.

Re:What about DRM PDFs?

[anjilslaire]

Here in the US, removing the DRM would be circumventing the protection and therefore in violation of the DMCA, in addition to whatever th license does or does not allow.

Re:What about DRM PDFs?

[eulernet]

I remember I tried several freewares to recover a DRMed PDF once.
Try for example GuaPDF.

Re:What about DRM PDFs?

[bcrowell]

How do I remove the DRM

On linux: gs -q -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=b.pdf a.pdf -c '.setpdfwrite'

or would removing the DRM so that I can use them in a third party PDF viewer be a violation of my license with the college and publishers?

Who cares? You're in a situation where you're being horribly abused. The professor chose the book, the publisher chose to put DRM on it, and the publishing industry's lobbyists got Congress to pass the DMCA...just do whatever works for you. You paid for the book, after all.

I really don't want to lose my eBook library, but I don't want to get infected either.

Turn off javascript in AR: Edit, Preferences, JavaScript, and uncheck "Enable Acrobat JavaScript".

Re:What about DRM PDFs?

[bendodge]

Kpdf (part of KDE 3.5) had a checkbox to ignore DRM. I don't know of Okular (KDE 4) does.

Re:What about DRM PDFs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okular supports DRM in PDF's.
There's even a checkbox in the configuration to toggle if it should obey the DRM or not.

Re:What about DRM PDFs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who says you can't have both. One for untrusted documents and only use Adobe for trusted documents. Like your eBook library for example. Hopefully it's trusted.

Foxit Reader

[blind biker]

It's amazing that Foxit Reader has nearly all the functionality of the newest Acrobat Reader, but the installer is 10X smaller! And not to speak about how much more stable it is. Now I put Foxit on every computer I use. Foxit is so much better than Acrobat Reader, that every time I see it on a computer I think to myself "Are you effing kidding me????!!!"

I really don't understand how did the Adobe SW engineers manage to make such a bloated and unstable POS.

Re:Foxit Reader

[LordLimecat]

Probably the same way HP printer drivers are 350mb.
I'm actually starting to suspect that the same people who write the adobe reader/updater code, also work in the HP drivers division. Both use FEAD/Nosso compression, both have obnoxious updaters, both are massively bloated....
/tinfoil hat

Re:Foxit Reader

[blind biker]

You know what? I have no friggin' idea how HP gets away with those monstruous drivers. It's nuts.

Re:Foxit Reader

[MassacrE]

I really don't understand how did the Adobe SW engineers manage to make such a bloated and unstable POS.

Practice?

Re:Foxit Reader

[plover]

You know what? I have no friggin' idea how HP gets away with those monstruous drivers. It's nuts.

Because people keep buying HP printers. It's that simple.

I switched away from HP many years ago, instead trying a series of printers. First I bought Lexmark (equally crap drivers, I've bought my last of those as well) and Epson, and finally settling on Canon printers. Since I use ink jets, I really liked the Canon because the print head is separate from the tanks, and there are six individual color tanks. Replacement ink is about $10 per tank as opposed to $40 for the three-color+print-head HP cartridge. And the drivers? Pretty much invisible, unless there's a problem.

HP really needs to cut back on the arrogance. We really don't have to buy their sh!t, as there are many better performing alternatives out there, and people are learning.

long-standing rendering bug in evince

[innocent_white_lamb]

Unfortunately, Adobe Reader is currently the only PDF viewer that can be consistently counted on to render all PDF files properly.

Here is one example:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.general/336357

Solution: Replace PDF with ODF

[Orion Blastar]

The Open Document Format - ODF was supposed to replace PDF anyway. Why not hasten the process and make a PDF to ODF converter?

The ODF Alliance should be on that case to do a converter program to convert all document formats to ODF format.

Re:Solution: Replace PDF with ODF

[tepples]

The Open Document Format - ODF was supposed to replace PDF anyway.

For one thing, can ODF embed fonts?

Re:Solution: Replace PDF with ODF

[Hucko]

ODF was to restrain the problem of data being held hostage in a proprietary format. The most recognised targets were .doc & .xls but not limited to them.

Pdf is a different problem though. An earlier version has been a public standard (OSI? That one that Microsoft gamed with those single use countries... ;)

Any good at printing in Windows?

[bazald]

I have been forced to switch back to the official Adobe Acrobat Reader to print many documents, at least in Windows. Foxit and Sumatra are simply no good at printing. Foxit was okay with some documents but not others. Sumatra always tried to generate multiple gigabytes to send to my HP LaserJet 2200D. Acrobat Reader on the other hand was able to manage every document I tried with a megabyte or two, at most.

Is Okular for Windows any better?

Re:Any good at printing in Windows?

[ColaMan]

Yeah, it seems that quite a few open source programs seem to render the pages as images and then send that off to the printer driver, rather than doing it in postscript and letting the driver do the image rendering (which is what I presume Adobe reader does). It's fine if you've got the space and processor time to spare, not so fine on a 600MHz netbook with a few hundred megs of free disk space.

So it's an Acrobat Reader 5.1 for me - renders pretty much all the PDF's I need to read, doesn't have too much bloat. Every version after that seems to have ballooned in size and annoying 'features' that I don't need.

Re:nice that there was an MS rep there to pay him

[Draek]

They would, if Linux was able to run 99% of the world's Windows applications. Yes, I know there are some PDFs out there that Evince et al can't open, but so far I haven't found any and I have *hundreds* of PDFs on my computer so chances are they're a stastistically insignificant percentage and, as such, unlikely to bother the average user.

Re:nice that there was an MS rep there to pay him

[moderatorrater]

using this guys logic, he should be saying to dump Microsoft and use another OS due to the large number of breakins on Windows boxes.

Unless he thought that the cost of switching OSes was significantly higher than the cost of switching to another free piece of software on top of that OS. With Windows, people need it to do things that no other operating system can do, namely, running Windows-only applications as well as they can be run. Switching to another OS requires either dealing with emulation, a VM, or not being able to run those programs at all. In addition, there are costs in either a steep learning curve going to linux or hardware to get a Mac. Cost to change: many, many hours of learning or a few thousand dollars.

On the other hand, as long as these PDF readers can read any pdf that adobe can, and as long as they're free like adobe is, there's no other cost. Hell, you can even have adobe installed just in case you'll need it, but make another reader the default for everything, thereby giving you the security of having another reader without any loss in functionality. Cost to change: maybe half an hour.

In other words, your bias is showing.

better -- use pdfs appropriately!

[owlnation]

Actually, what would also be a huge help (regardless of reader) would be to only use PDF where it was appropriate to do so -- namely, when the end user actually needs to print said document.

I realize there's pretty much no point in saying this, as it seems that many designers -- especially in large organizations -- seem to give little thought to the end user, and the usability of their site. (inappropriate or unnecessary use of pdf, flash, javascript, popups (still!) etc )

I'm tired of going to a site to find that in order to find out -- for example, where an event is going to take place -- that I have to download a 3 page pdf document, one that would have been so much easier and quicker and accessible as html on a webpage.

I'm willing to bet that, at the very least, half of all pdfs created do not need to be pdfs in the first place.

Re:better -- use pdfs appropriately!

[Hucko]

Isn't one of the 'features' of pdf that it is for document exchange? One of the talking points was that it "couldn't be changed" by the end viewer. Bollocks of course, but there aren't very many good native-pdf word processors.

I believe they were designed to replace printouts unless a print version was actually needed, not be the printout vector themselves. The idea that end to end would look the same no matter what was used to view it. acroread, other pdf reader, or paper.

Html attacks a similar problem, but not the same problem.

Re:better -- use pdfs appropriately!

[petermgreen]

Isn't one of the 'features' of pdf that it is for document exchange? One of the talking points was that it "couldn't be changed" by the end viewer. Bollocks of course,
pdf can be edited but your average luser has no easy way to do so. I belive the full acrobat has some limited editing capabilities but that is sufficiantly expensive that relatively few mahines have it installed.

Some OSS tools try to edit pdf with varying degrees of success.

Usually if the pdf has "encryption"/restrictions in use you have to strip that first with another price of software before you can load it into your editing tool.

Re:better -- use pdfs appropriately!

[Cochonou]

While your point has some merit, I still think you're nitpicking a bit. On most hardware/sofware configurations, PDFs should display in your browser, with blocks of pages progressively displaying are they are being downloaded for very large files.
Unfortunately, there are some configuration on which this is not possible. On the top of my head, Intel+Mac OS X+Firefox (works with Safari) or PPC+Linux+Firefox or Linux-Epiphany (works with Konqueror).

Re:better -- use pdfs appropriately!

[Hucko]

I apologise, I forgot the ~ at the end of that sentence.

Okular has no chance there ...

[MartinSchou]

Okular has no chance there. Not amongst regular Windows users at least.

Step 1 - Go to PDFreaders.org - no issue
Step 2 - Click on "Download" on the intersection between Okular and Windows - no issue
Step 3 - Click "Download latest installer for immediate installation. - no issue
Step 4 - Run the KDE installer - not so much an issue, as what it does is
Step 5 - Click Next - "install from Internet" is the default setting, sounds reasonable
Step 6 - Select a download server - "What the hell did I just download then?"
Step 7 - Select an available release - Ehh? Whut?
Step 8 - Select the package you want to install - Well, that's just fucked up. 140+ packages to choose from. They're sorted by package name ONLY, cannot sort by package notes.
Step 9 - Look for something called Okular as package name. None found
Step 10 - "Oh, well, maybe these are packages I want in addition to Okular. I mean, I downloaded the Okular installer, right?"
Step 11 - Click Next
Step 12 - Installation/Update finished
Step 13 - Realise that NOTHING has been installed.
Step 14 - Get annoyed
Step 15 - Call tech support (realise this is a free program and there's noone to yell at)
Step 16 - Download and run the installer again (because they forgot where they downloaded it to)
Step 17 - Get to the package list and start reading very carefully
Step 18 - Wonder why the hell the package list goes Czech, Kashubian, Welsh, Danish, German, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Estonian [spelling package]
Step 19 - Realise there's still no Okular package anywhere
Step 20 - Read the list for the 3rd time and note that "Graphics applications" has a note "(including Okular)"
Step 21 - Wonder why the hell the download Okular link from before doesn't give you the fucking package to begin with
Step 22 - Notice that you're now downloading 40 (forty!) packages from the servers
Step 23 - Notice that one of these files are 60+ MB
Step 24 - Wonder why they call Acrobat Reader bloated and slow when that installer is less than 25 MB and takes about 30 seconds to install, just by clicking Next until you're done.
Step 25 - Notice that you now have a folder called "Programs" in your Start menu's program folder, which is aparently a sym-link to the program folder (doesn't point to itself though)
Step 26 - Find the "KDE 4.22 Release" folder in Programs and notice these programs:

• Help
• Graphics\More Applications\KColorChooser (Color Chooser)
• Graphics\More Applications\KRuler (Screen Ruler)
• Graphics\Gwenview (Image Viewer)
• Graphics\KolourPaint (Paint Program)
• Graphics\Okular (Document Viewer)
• Network\KNetAttach (Network Folder Wizard)

Step 27 - Wonder once more why the hell people call Acrobat Reader bloated when this program installs with 5 extra programs.
Step 28 - Start the bloody program!
Step 29 - KConf_update.exe would like to run. So, Acrobat Reader running its updater - Bad! This - GOOD!
Step 30 - TRY to put frustrations aside and use the program

That installer REALLY needs some work.

And if you are going to have a Windows program, be as kind as to have an actual uninstaller. NONE of the KDE programs installed are listed in (Add/Remove)Programs(and Features). No uninstallers in the start menu either. I realise a lot of vocal FOSS supporters don't like Windows, but please - if you're going to advocate FOSS, at least make it live up to the LOW standards of Windows software (the non-malicious part of that group).

Re:Okular has no chance there ...

[LiquidFire_HK]

Well, to be fair, the KDE on Windows page does say, in bold,

KDE on Windows is not in the final state, so applications can be unsuitable for day to day use yet.

The installer is far from suitable for end-users as well. I'm not sure why the website would link to the KDE installer without any instructions (there is no installer specific to Okular, or any specific KDE program, yet).

Re:Okular has no chance there ...

[LiquidFire_HK]

I should also add that kconf_update doesn't do updating (in the sense of downloading software from the Internet), it just cleans up/modifies configuration files.

Re:Okular has no chance there ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Okular isn't targetted at Window's users. It's targetted at KDE users. Hell, even Ubuntu users tend not to install it.

It's only useful on windows if you actually want to replace explorer with KDE.

Re:Okular has no chance there ...

[Anonymous Coward]

OK...
Step 31 - Open Browser go to Slashdot. Try to post comment--Add noscript for slashdot.org and try again--Add noscript exception for fsdn.org
Step 32 - Post Funny and Insightful comment to Slashdot outlining experience installing Okular
Step 33 - Wait
Step 34 - Read informative post explaining the install experience.
Step 35 - Feel enlightened with your new understanding that everything is working as designed. Its all OK because somewhere it says its supposed to be bad (in bold even).

Re:Okular has no chance there ...

[D Ninja]

You forgot...

Step 31 - ???
Step 40 - PROFIT!

Foxit is unsuitable

[GF678]

This isn't FUD, this is based on my own experiences:

I've found that the latest Foxit Reader is unable to show certain PDFs, in particular those created using the latest version of Adobe Acrobat. I created some PDFs in Acrobat 9 and when loaded into Foxit Reader 3.0, showed up entirely blank. The only way to view them was to put Adobe Reader on instead. So I did.

I'm not sure why Foxit showed these PDFs entirely blank. Maybe Acrobat 9 has a new version of the PDF standard that's incompatable, I don't know. What I do know is it means that if I want to gurantee the viewing of PDF files, I pretty much require Adobe products, which isn't that bad if you're using Reader 9 (much faster than version 8).

Possibly a vendor lock-in mechanism, but I'm tired of fighting. It's easier just to go with Adobe and get on with work.

Re:Foxit is unsuitable

[GF678]

One more thing I forgot to mention - I switched from Acrobat to PDFCreator a while back. It's very good, and anything I render using PDFCreator works just fine with Foxit Reader. Also has the side benefit of being open source and an example of an actually GOOD open source product. Unfortunately this doesn't discount the fact that other people might use Acrobat to render THEIR PDFs, and I don't want to cut myself off from being able to view them.

Re:Foxit is unsuitable

[bcrowell]

Yeah, I tried to get my school to use foxit instead of AR. It didn't work out well at all. The pdfs they were using wouldn't display correctly in foxit. Unfortunately, Windows is a wasteland when it comes to open-source software. The best solution, if you have the choice, is to switch to ubuntu.

Re:Foxit is unsuitable

[GF678]

Unfortunately, Windows is a wasteland when it comes to open-source software. The best solution, if you have the choice, is to switch to ubuntu.

What are you talking about? Windows has Pidgin, OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP, InkScape, Audacity etc. In many cases (and in particular Firefox's case), GUI performance is better in Windows. Audacity works flawlessly and doesn't have the issue of dealing with various sound subsystems and locked devices that I'm STILL experiencing in Linux.

Why would I move to a system that has even less software to choose from? Open Source is alive and well in Windows, and if an open source tool is not suitable for you, eh, big deal, use a commercial app if you can get hold of it. You can't say the same for Linux commercial apps (what few of them there are).

Re:Foxit is unsuitable

[Cochonou]

Well, I think you will hardly find anyone to discuss that the free/open-source software selection (except for a few high-profile apps) on Windows is very limited compared to what is available on Linux.
Similarly, I think you will hadly find anyone to discuss that the commercial software selection (except for a few high-profile apps) on Linux is very limited compared to what is available on Windows.

Good reason..

[anonymousNR]

For a while now I was ignoring my inner voice yelling "Uninstall Adobe Reader", This sounds like a good reason for me to do that now. Sumatra here I come.

Re:Which PDF reader for Linux handles forms the be

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux: ready for the desktop!

Rendering quality?

[wahaa]

Does anybody have something to share about rendering quality?

Re:Which PDF reader for Linux handles forms the be

[Just Brew It!]

Evince seems to do a splendid job of rendering (and printing) PDFs that don't have forms in them. Does anyone know if the forms extension is part of the ISO standard, or is it a proprietary Adobe thing? Because if it is a proprietary extension, it hardly seems fair to blame Linux for not handling it properly, nor for Adobe's inability to make a product that doesn't suck.

Broken ones are JetForm/LiveCycle based

[bigtrike]

Foxit does not yet support JetForm/LiveCycle based PDFs. Neither does OSX's Preview.

I wish people would stop using LiveCycle to produce PDFs, from what I can tell the format is not documented in the PDF ISO specification. Additionally, the newer format does not seem to provide any features that were not previously available in PDF. One can only speculate that it was done out of laziness or to thwart competition after they opened the format.

Re:Broken ones are JetForm/LiveCycle based

[Skuld-Chan]

It is an open specification:

http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/xml/index_arch.html

And yes it does provide a lot of things not available in the pdf spec - for example directly rendered forms (which require significantly less bandwidth).

I wish people would stop spreading fud about Acrobat/Reader. Having worked for Adobe (I no longer do sadly) on Acrobat specifically a few facts:

A) update manager only starts with the app - it doesn't run constantly and you can disable it and use the help > check for updates feature - you can even deploy it to a million machines with this setting (thanks to its msi installer and customization wizard).

B) patches are released only once per quarter - I don't recall anytime (unless it was a security hotfix) that we released more than one patch per quarter.

C) Foxit is great - its the reason why Adobe made the PDF spec and ISO standard.

That said - it only impliments maybe a tenth (and I'm being really generous here) of what Reader/Acrobat can do. If you take reader and remove all the plugins from it its as small as foxit and starts just as fast and has as much functionality. There really are people in banking, finance, manufacturing, education, printing etc that rely on these features.

As some people have mentioned - it lacks a lot of features required in form support. I'd also add that it doesn't support postscript passthrough, or any number of a hundred different features required for pre-press work (color separation, color management, analysis or reporting).

I'd also add that foxit supports javascipt as well - which means eventually once it reaches Slashdot market dominance it will become a ripe target for hackers as well.

On security - as far back as Acrobat 4 it had security issues - no-one messed around with it because frankly it wasn't a big enough target. It wasn't until someone a while back (I think while Acrobat 7 was shipping) that someone exploited it and the blood was in the water. Once that happened every security researcher/hacker under the sun was working on it. Until it happens to your product you can sit there and say whatever you are doing is secure, but trust me its not. Once in the hands of people who really want to exploit it for real money want to - you essentially will play a cat and mouse game for the rest of the products lifecycle where sometimes you win and sometimes they win.

On launch performance - I'd actually bet money that Acrobat 9 Pro would launch faster than Foxit - yes seriously. It launches 10x faster than 8 did because it only loads libraries as it needs them (instead of doing like a 120+ loadlib calls on start). Essentially if you're just loading a pdf and looking at it - it doesn't need to load all the plugins for forms, annotations and 3d annotations etc.

Also for visual performance (and foxit definately doesn't have this) 8 and later can use a video card with pixel shader 3 hardware to accelerate the filling in and drawing of vectors to the point where you can do things like realtime zoom, rotations and scrolling on a pdf file - even complex ones.

Re:They are NOT free!

[Hucko]

it is an open standard, you are welcome to do so.

Re:nice that there was an MS rep there to pay him

[erroneus]

I'm not entirely certain of that compatibility problem. Many Mac users don't run Windows apps at all and comparability is not necessarily an issue. Part of what drives many Mac users is that it is NOT Windows and so they feel better because of it. For some people, it only takes knowing that there is a viable alternative for them to make the switch. "All the advantages of Mac without the price!"

This is slashdot!

[Kludge]

Step 1: Don't buy anything with DRM protection.
Step 2: Repeat.

Re:This is slashdot!

[Artifex]

Step 1: Don't buy anything with DRM protection.
Step 2: Repeat.

This is Slashdot, where we don't help you with problems you have if we can tell you you shouldn't have gotten into them. :)

here's a more comprehensive list

[belmolis]

This list is more comprehensive.

Re:here's a more comprehensive list

[Anonymous Coward]

That list is broken and incomplete.

I've gone to Kpdf and I won't go back

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to use Adobe's Linux Acrobat Reader; 4 was the first version I recall using. I loved that Adobe provided a Linux release, even if it wasn't open (I prefer open programs, but I won't cry if I don't get them). I kept upgrading as new versions were released, until, I think, 8 (maybe?) This version decided that it would install a bunch of shit into ~/.local, overriding KDE's PDF icons with its own that were out of place, and generally making a mess of itself. Cleaning up ~/.local didn't help, because acroread would create that horrible, horrible mess each time I started it. If I wanted to change file associations, etc, I would do it! I don't need a program doing it behind my back. Ask me, that's fine; don't just do it, though.

So I ditched acroread. I realized that kpdf does everything I need it to, it integrates with my desktop, and it doesn't try to force changes on me. I'd probably still be a happy acroread user if they didn't decide that they should take over my desktop. That works on windows, where people have become resigned to programs fucking them over. But it doesn't work for me.

Re:They are NOT free!

[quickOnTheUptake]

Almost all come with that retarded GNU license (which means you can't use it commercially)

What do you mean? The GPL explicitly allows for commercial use or sale.

Re:They are NOT free!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't somebody create a PDF Reader with MIT style licence? Come on guys!

OK, let us know when you've written it...

Re:I dropped Adobe PDF reader for a different reas

[Anonymous Coward]

Yah good choice.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2996

#6 there is the dealbreaker.

[Shag]

Apple's "Preview" (included with OS X, and did anyone mention that OS X's display model is visual PDF or something like that?) does pretty much everything you need there, better than Acrobat, and with less bloat. (And to the other poster who was wondering, yes, you can fill in forms. Can't create/edit them, though.) But although it runs on Intel, it doesn't run on Windows. Sorry. :(

Needed feature

[geminidomino]

Since my profs and TAs seem to love Acrobat's "comments"(those stupid yellow icons that display on a mouseover), are there any on linux that will display them? I've had no luck with Evince or Okular on hardy.

Re:Which PDF reader for Linux handles forms the be

[retchdog]

What went wrong with the linux acroread? I use it on ubuntu 8.04 with no problems except for no encryption, which hasn't been a problem yet.

Foxit isn't all that great, either

[damn_registrars]

I tried to get by with foxit reader for a couple years, updating as often as it requested. I found that unfortunately it was not a suitable replacement in all cases. As someone else already mentioned, it cannot open the newest PDFs made by the newest Acrobat (though that is to be expected). However that is not my biggest problem with foxit.

My biggest problem is that the foxit plugin for firefox is terrible in terms of long-term stability. I have never seen a plugin consume memory so voraciously; even flash isn't that bad. If I opened a pdf in firefox through the foxit plugin, and then closed the window, firefox would nonetheless proceed to consume all available memory and drag my system to its knees in a few days or less, even without opening up any additional pdfs in that time period. Removing foxit and installing the adobe reader solved that problem.

I would very much prefer to not use the Adobe reader, but when the alternative is that bad I don't have much choice.

Re:Foxit isn't all that great, either

[olman]

Just don't use the firefox plugin. There's no particular _need_ to open the PDF in browser, is there?

Kick out the browser plugin and the pdf will open in the standalone program like FSM meant it.

Re:Foxit isn't all that great, either

[damn_registrars]

There's no particular _need_ to open the PDF in browser, is there?

I wish that were true. Unfortunately there are some academic journals that I read that have found a sufficiently creative way to obfuscate the identity of the PDF versions of articles such that you can only open the article in a browser window (at which point then you can save it as a PDF).

It is extremely annoying, but reading those articles is absolutely required for me to do my job as a scientist. And as much as I would rather not use the Adobe reader if I didn't absolutely have to, I'm not going to use another system entirely just to read papers. And keeping two PDF readers (one as a plugin the other for all other uses) doesn't make any sense, so back to Adobe I went.

Re:Foxit isn't all that great, either

[olman]

Generally speaking the PDF file is just registered for foxit in firefox so it gets automagically dumped to a temporary location and foxit (or acrobat) will handle the file. So I definitely do not save pdf files 1st and open them later.

I think foxit does all that for you as long as you un-tick "open PDF in browser" during installation.

Tracker Software

[eric2hill]

The free PDF Viewer from Tracker Software is a wonderfully fast PDF reader, and comes with annotation capability right out of the box. They are very developer friendly, and their PDF XChange printer drivers produce PDF's that are tighter and better optimized than Adobe themselves. Great company to work with, and a great free PDF viewer.

PDF Studio from Qoppa

[emaname]

One more to consider. I haven't tried this product yet but will soon. NOTE: It ain't free. It's based on Java. But it's less expensive and if they keep the package trim and secure, that's fine by me. I just don't want to deal w/A-D'oh-be anymore.

PDF Studio(tm) for Linux, Mac & Windows

http://www.qoppa.com/index.html

Disclaimer: If this product sucks, my apologies in advance for suggesting it.

I'm waiting for the...

[mysidia]

Adobe suggests ditching F-Secure for other anti-malware products.

But that won't happen and people aren't going to switch PDF readers, until the security software itself starts identifying Acrobat installations as riskware and displaying dialog boxes alerting users to the security risk and what actions they need to take (what types of alternatives are available to use)..

So what's the best reader for Windows

[Animats]

All I need is a PDF reader that will render correctly, won't create security problems, and will run on Win32. What's current thinking on this? The alternatives listed:

• MuPDF Seems to be mostly a demo for a new graphics library.
• Okular Does that even run on Windows? The table says yes, but the site says no.
• Sumatra PDF Do I want to trust something that comes from "blog.kowalczyk.info"?
• Yap Just a front end for GhostScript, which does a mediocre job on PostScript.

Re:So what's the best reader for Windows

[mindcorrosive]

Sumatra PDF Do I want to trust something that comes from "blog.kowalczyk.info"?

Oh, I don't know.. Depends whether you trust FSF then. Trust hierarchy:
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.fsfeurope.org/
http://pdfreaders.org/
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/index.html

You surely won't find problem discovering the links between those sites, as it took me no more than two minutes.

For what it's worth, I use SumatraPDF for my LaTeX writings, as it's extremely small and fast, and renders some images better than Adobe Reader.

9.0 crashes IE

[JimboFBX]

I lived with reader 7.0. I heard about the banner exploits that serve up pdfs, and sure enough one day somethingawful.com's ad banner service served up a pdf document. I immediately force closed it before that bloated application took the 10 seconds it takes to load, then upgraded to the latest version. Now IE crashes whenever I close it. Not too big a deal on its own but friggen annoying when another program uses IE to display something. Uninstalled reader 9.0, then reinstalled it. Same issue...

The Gimp is Cross-Platform

[flyingfsck]

You can edit PDFs and paste text onto forms with the Gimp. Kinda painful, but it works and then you can save the file in any format you want.

Font rendering

[TeknoHog]

For most PDFs I use xpdf, but for longer texts I prefer Acroread despite the obvious flaws. So far I haven't found any other PDF reader for Linux that does subpixel font rendering. Are there any Free readers that don't smudge up the fonts?

Re:nice that there was an MS rep there to pay him

[MPolo]

On the other hand, I very often get PDFs that evince can't print correctly. For example, anything lilypond outputs is full of artifacts when printed in evince, perfect when printed in acroread or viewed in evince...

vim-like PDF reader

[Vinegaroon]

If anyone wants a vim-like PDF reader, try apvlv.

F-Secure Blog

[Leevi]

They talked about this months ago in their blog http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001623.html Out of context taken quote "we're not recommending Foxit."

PDF comments on linux

[mu22le]

bump [sorry :(]

I have exactly the same problem, I'd choose free software over closed source any time, but AFAIK there is no libre pdf reader that support reading (not to mention writing) comments, that's why I keep an old copy of acrobat 7 around (much faster and less bloated that newer versions)

Does anyone know an alternative?

Re:PDF comments on linux

[geminidomino]

Yes. I was wrong. :) Okular DOES support comments. :) I forgot, I was using Okular on my Intrepid box at home, and the crapper on the work box was kpdf.

Acrobat is nuisanceware

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately it is true that some PDFs only work with Acrobat (although I admit that I have never met a "protected" PDF that was worth the protection). So in some cases, installing Acrobat seems to be necessary, even on MacOS X, where the OS provides a pretty good PDF Viewer. However, when you do that, Adobe installs plugins in your browser and changes browser settings without even asking, just like any other malware. And after every upgrade you have again to go through the settings and repair the damage Adobe has done. I wouldn't complain if Acrobat was an improvement over the built in PDF Viewer, but it is slower, bloated, has an inconsistent user interface (being inconsistent in itself it cannot be consistent with the other applications of the plattform). And in the single area where you would wish some improvement over Mac OS X Preview, namly in printing (ever tried to print a document as a booklet?), it delivers no improvement. So it is probably fair to classify Acrobat as malware: a nuisance to the user with hardly any benefit.

AutoHotkey

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a strange feeling that AutoHotkey could be set up to do that automatically every time you open the application.

xpdf

[mzs]

Am I the only one here that uses xpdf?

I had a problem with Sumatra

[JSBiff]

For awhile, being the Open Source geek I am, I was using Sumatra exclusively for reading PDFs. Then, and insurance agent sent me a quote for health insurance, and 2 out of the 4 pages rendered blank. At first I thought there was a problem with the pdf file, but I tried downloading Adobe Reader, and it rendered just fine.

I would love to suggest an open source, lightweight, more secure pdf reader for my friends and family, but if there are going to be docs that won't render right, I can't suggest anything other than Adobe Reader, unfortunately. My friends and family would quickly come to distrust my recommendations if I recommend things and then they have problems with them.

I think the bigger issue here is, should we be thinking about trying to offer an alternative format for device-independent "ePaper"? PDF seems to be a moving target, and more of a proprietary format than a true standard (I think Adobe submitted a version of the PDF format to ISO a couple years back, didn't they? But I guess they must keep changing the format, or something. I suppose the version they submitted as a 'standard' might have been crippled, missing a lot of the features that the full Adobe Acrobat implements).

  Someone earlier suggested that we should be trying to push ODF as an alternative, but the problem with that is that word processor files are meant to fill a slightly different role than PDF. The seemingly most likely candidate to come to mind is the old .dvi (device independent file) format created for the TeX system. Can anything other than TeX/LaTeX create .dvi files? Like, could you print to dvi in OO.org the same way you can print to pdf?

I Suggest

[sexconker]

Ditching PDF.
And Flash.
And Java.

Get that shit off the web.

99.9% of the time it's useless crap that serves up all sorts of ads, malware, sucks up your CPU, etc.

Blocking it doesn't help because then the site doesn't work.

Javascript is actually the only one that serves a useful purpose in most cases, and the only one that can't easily be replaced while keeping functionality the same.

Isn't it funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it funny how so much of what passes as "security advice" is really nothing more than an advertisment for FOSS?

Very shamelessly so, one might add.

Re:Which PDF reader for Linux handles forms the be

[Just Brew It!]

Whenever I tried to open any of the IRS PDF forms, it would crash back to the desktop. Just *poof*, no error messages or anything. It worked OK with PDFs that didn't have forms in them, but if that was all I needed I would've just used Evince.

PDF is the problem

[greg.collver]

The PDF format should be dumped in favor of SVG, the sooner, the better.

Compatibility?

[rnturn]

A lot of people have posted alternatives to Acrobat Reader and I have my own preferences as well. I used to like "kpdf" because it was nice to just drag-n-drop a file and the viewer would be displayed. Sadly, kpdf doesn't seem to be getting updated any more -- at least for KDE 3.x (I haven't tried using V4.x yet). Gnome seems to think that "gv" is good for displaying PDFs and it is capable of doing that. To a point. Sure.. "gv" launches a heck of a lot faster than Reader but, more and more, I've been running into PDFs that will not render properly unless Adobe's viewer is used. For example, some documents appear as though they might be formatted to be displayed in landscape when you view them using something other than Reader; the page is shifted off the right side of the window. Changing the page format to landscape doesn't help. View the same document using Reader and it's properly displayed in portrait. Since a lot of documents that are being distributed by vendors, governments, schools, are being created (one presumes) using Adobe's tools, any Reader alternatives have to be able to deal with this. I always thought that the PDF format was a standard. Looks like maybe I was wrong to think that.

Re:Which PDF reader for Linux handles forms the be

[retchdog]

Weird. Worked for me, but that's actually a bad thing. This kind of inconsistency is sort of disturbing.

I keep an old kernel around for when I need to use my old version of Matlab; the newer ones cause it to crash early and often.

not updates, but refuse to open pdf until upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

if it knows its an outdated version, there is update available,
it knows that current version is vulnerable to attack, so it should refuse
to open, let the user ignore at his own peril

much better than , hey there is an update available, you haven't viewed any pdfs for 2 years, its urgent that you upgrade, if you view a bad pdf you'll be owned!!!

embedded movies?

[lee1]

Does any free pdf reader that runs on linux support embedded movies and other special annotations?

It's a question of values: do you value freedom?

[jbn-o]

Sometimes you'll have to give up functionality for freedom. The question is what is your freedom worth to you? You should value software freedom for it's own sake and work to add the missing features or help others do so on your behalf (which is why it's better to prefer a less-functional free program than a more powerful proprietary program). If you value the ability to keep your documents from others without your permission, or keep your computer under your control and not someone stranger's control, you'll soon learn to value your freedom to share and modify programs whether you're a programmer or not.

Even if you look at this from a perspective that doesn't respect freedom (always unwise) you'll be compelled to choose free software--other mandates will force you to make decisions which naturally exclude proprietary software. For example, American educational organizations which must obey FERPA can't release student information willy-nilly. So they should not choose programs they know may allow unauthorized access to sensitive records, like the kinds you'll find on many educational workers' workstations. It's not hard to see how a Javascript program running under the authority of such a worker could grant an unauthorized party access to sensitive information. This necessarily guides what software these workers should run and how that software ought to be configured; inconveniences become side issues.