Thank you, Adobe Reader 9 | Hacker News Reader

Thank you, Adobe Reader 9

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68 pointsnickb32 comments

It's a real disaster that Adobe Reader sucks so much. PDF is a wonderful document format - other readers open it in seconds and it works on everything (including Linux, OS X and most phones). But thanks to Adobe if you ever send a PDF file to a windows user you get a five minute rant about how much PDF sucks and can you send it as a wonderful, efficient docx instead :/

http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/why-not-pdf.html

Synopsis: PS or PS.gz is even better than pdf.

Not for portability. Do most Windows users have PS viewers installed?

That's right. And that's why I did not write it as my own opinion. 'Social' reasons make pdf better in this regard.

I still prefer html for reading on-screen, though.

I should point out that the article is incorrect. Namely, PDF is a complete superset of PS. Furthermore, it is capable of supporting non-printer specific properties like digital signatures and even external files and animation, none of which are supported by PS. (And before you say that animation is useless, imagine using PDF for presentations). Try reading the PDF 1.6 standard sometime (its dry like all standards but it gives a demonstration of what PDF is capable of).

Are you sure that PDF is a superset of PS? Which parts of PostScript are part of the Portable Document Format?

I'm not familiar with the new stuff in PDF/PS but I'd say it probably depends on the specific versions. At the very least anything that adheres to EPS has always been part of PDF.

Yeah. PDF is awesome. Acrobat Reader isn't.

And suddenly Stallman doesn't sound so crazy.

Don't forget to get Foxit reader if you don't have it yet : http://www.foxitsoftware.com/

Is it safe to get it for free through the TrialPay offer, or am I going to get spammed/abused for going this route?

Woah, since when did Foxit Reader become not free?

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2008/07/04/adobe-9

Mac OS X Leopard users:

[spacebar]

Now Linux users can too! http://sourceforge.net/projects/gloobus

Are there any linux tools to mark-up/comment-on PDFs? I'm often forced to use the windows version of Acrobat to make and view edits on a document, because I haven't found any linux tools that will even display comments (let alone edit them).

http://annotations.diariolinux.com/

Mac: <Spacebar> or Preview or indeed Skim... slim and functional, thank you! :-)

How can it possibly need 210 MB?

Umm, they needed more room to put in more backdoors?

Dunno really, I'm still trying to comprehend that myself.

Might be the recommended amount - it probably wants some space for a disk cache.

There is a lot of support for niche features (3D, etc) pushed into the base reader because it provides a significant business advantage to Adobe.

For example, they stand to benefit tremendously if a government agency decides to go with PDF as their document review format over Autodesk's DWF. The fact that the average consumer already has everything they need to use these solutions is a big bullet point in their favor.

They don't stand to lose much if some picky internet folk (not criticizing - I'm one too) decide to use a free alternative because Acrobat's too heavy.

Funny you should say that... There are ads plastered al over the DC metro system for nothing but using Adobe PDF to simplify government forms.

At least Apple is up-front that you need Quicktime when installing iTunes, Adobe just installs the kitchen sink...

Why can't they allow you to add in these features if you want these features?

There's no reason why the users should be forced to install all these bloaty features.

on the bright side it's good news for AIR developers since AIR is part of this bundle

another satisfied customer: http://gusmueller.com/blog/archives/2008/07/adobe_reader_9_i...

What cracks me up is the ReadMe.html that is being installed next to the application. Do they have so little faith in their own PDF format that they decided to use an HTML file?

In all fairness, if the read me contains information about what to do when you can't get the application working...

It would be a huge WTF if the only way to find out why you can't read PDF files is locked inside a PDF file :-)

Thinking of it: so PDF maybe stands for (Hidden) Proprietary Document Format?

(In the sense of: you will never ever be able to desire all of our features we are continuously adding to our Take-Over-The-World-Document-Format?)

I'm confused.

PDF is an open spec. Adobe's viewer sucking is a separate issue.

Do you know the whole story? PDF has not been created by users, but by a company.

Only now we have seen it changing into an ISO standard.

(Originally, Adobe only wanted to see it universally used to sell their PDF writers: please read for free, and please please pay for writing it. Only that it didn't happen this way.)

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