[John Perry]

...
Are you talking about embedding URLs in the PDF document to call home to the
Author? Or that Adobe gives that capability to the author of a page?

Both, if I understand your first question.

If so I

didn't know about the latter. Either way I can shut my firewall while
reading documents I don't trust.

As you can with html. But with a modern browser you don't need to.

I worry about other capabilities of HTML.

It seems like part of the way towards a programming language and I don't
know how much of the way it really is.

Html is a text markup language, and that's it. Period. It's the other
things, javascript, java, visual basic, etc, that do the damage if you
let them. Adobe reader now supports javascript, just like html. But
Adobe Reader doesn't let you turn off javascript. Modern web browsers do.

http://lwn.net/Articles/129729/

John Perry

 

[Jerry Steiger]

The underlying principles and mathematics necessary to derive the
solutions are buried in user friendly software and overly simplified for
the masses.

However, I do like spell check ;>)

So do I, but the same principles hold there as well. Don't you love seeing
the misspelled words where the writer didn't know that the spell checker
gave him the write spelling for the wrong word?

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

[Terry Pinnell]

I loaded it.
However (and it may be coincidence) the next time I started up the computer I
found all my nVidia drivers wiped out.

I sure hope it *was* a coincidence, as I too have nVidia drivers.

 

[Dirk Bruere at Neopax]

I sure hope it *was* a coincidence, as I too have nVidia drivers.

Some other weird shit seems to be happening.
I hope it hasn't screwed the registry.

--
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millenium
http://www.theconsensus.org

 

[Kman]

Or in my case, leave in an extra word left over from the previous rewrite.
Microsoft would really help me out if they would add a "gray cell" (i.e. old
fart) spell checker.



Kman

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Looks good. But how do I get it to open PDFs in my FF browser please?

Doesn't the Acrobat browser plug in work for you?

 

[Kman]

Guess so
When they mail out those annoying little packets of advertisement cards you
might guess where I archive them.

Kman

 

[Paul Burke]

I've been using it for a while, because Adobe is so bad. It has definite
faults though: its display quality is poor, and it has real problems
sizing and printing pages that don't match the format of the original.
It also crashes fairly regularly when it prints.

Paul Burke

 

[Terry Pinnell]

I've been using it for a while, because Adobe is so bad. It has definite
faults though: its display quality is poor, and it has real problems
sizing and printing pages that don't match the format of the original.
It also crashes fairly regularly when it prints.

And the lack of integration with Firefox I described earlier.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Doesn't the Acrobat browser plug in work for you?

Yes, but the point was to replace that with Foxit.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Looks good. But how do I get it to open PDFs in my FF browser please?

Elsewhere, I've just been pointed to this explanation:
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/productivity/download-of-the-day-foxit-pdf-reader-109741.php

Seems Foxit requires me to uninstall Adobe Acrobat before I can get
Foxit to integrate with FF (and then it opens PDFs only in a new
window, rather than a new tab).

 

[JeffM]

I only use PDF for schematics. You can't beat it for that.

Darrell Harmon

If you qualify that as **multi-page schematics**, a reluctant Yes.
A single-page PNG would just get bigger with the PDF wrapper/

....then there's the
**requires a reader that supports a proprietary format** issue.
The woes that folks are describing with Adobe's reader
and with the Foxit reader are indicitave of the gotchas in that.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

**requires a reader that supports a proprietary format** issue.
The woes that folks are describing with Adobe's reader
and with the Foxit reader are indicitave of the gotchas in that.

Vaguely related: The state of Massachusetts is contemplating dumping
Microsoft Office unless it starts natively supporting their two selected
document formats: PDF and OpenDocument. The later I can see, but my
impression was that although lower versions of PDF were public standards that
anyone was free to use, the later versions are proprietary to Adobe and they
don't hand out the full document description under the guise of needing to
maintain 'security by obscurity' for their digital rights management
technology... in which case Adobe and PDF really don't seem that much better
than Word. Anyone know for certain?

 

[JeffM]

**requires a reader that supports a proprietary format** issue.

Vaguely related:
The state of Massachusetts is contemplating dumping Microsoft Office
unless it starts natively supporting
their two selected document formats: PDF and OpenDocument.
Joel Kolstad

Heh. Interesting you should mention that:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci...._frm/thread/c485ee90ddc3561d/c966aceed058e674
..
..

The later I can see, but my impression was that
although lower versions of PDF were public standards
that anyone was free to use,
the later versions are proprietary to Adobe
and they don't hand out the full document description
under the guise of needing to maintain 'security by obscurity'
for their digital rights management technology...

You mean like M$ APIs?
All the imperfect implementations of 3rd-party readers
would seem to bear that out.
..
..

in which case Adobe and PDF
really don't seem that much better than Word.
Anyone know for certain?

I think it depends on what your definition of "is" is
(or "open" or "free"):
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:...+royalty-free+Free-readers-for-many-platforms