[plug] acrobat reader and printing

[Christian]

On Tue, Sep 05, 2000 at 09:10:00PM +0800, BillK wrote:
> Anybody have any experiance of viewing acrobat files made by exporting
> from MSword 8.0 (as pdf's of course).  One of the lecturers at Murdoch
> has decided to distibute his notes in this form (on a unix based
> subject!) and I am unable to print them under linux using acrobat
> reader.  I am also unable to use another program as they are password
> protected which means kghostview etc cannot get a look in!  My thoughts
> are that MSword is producing a slightly nonstandard file that upsets the
> print drivers when printing under Linux.  Other pdf's print and seem
> OK.  There was also the bug where you have to run X in 16bit mode (in my
> case) to enable acrobat to even startup! - seems a bit of a dud of a
> program under linux!
> And of course, they work flawlessly under acrobat reader on windows:(

On my systems I've found that the Acrobat reader from Adobe virtually
*never* works correctly.  It either stuffs up all the colours or just
segfaults and dies.  My advice is to either use gv or xpdf.  In my
experience gv works fine with short PDF files (although the translation
process occurs per-page and is obviously slower than displaying PS; as a
tip, don't hit print and then close the window straight away until the
little banner at the top tells you it's finished processing or your
print job will get totally botched and your Postscript printer may go
crazy -- happens with mine).  For longer PDF files (approx. > 25 pages)
I recommend using xpdf or the utilities that come with it.  I've had
problems where gv totally botches the printing for these longer
documents (no idea why).  As for the choice of PDF for a unit on Unix,
it sounds like a good idea to me.  Most Windows lusers wouldn't have the
faintest clue what to do with Postscript and PDF is basically portable
enough to work on both platforms (given the right tools!).

Regards,

Christian.