[plug] acrobat reader and printing

[Bret Busby]

Christian wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Sep 06, 2000 at 11:08:56AM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> 
> > Without being an expert (expert = a drip under pressure) on the subject,
> > in my opinion, the problem is that of an academic using an application
> > that produces non-standard output, apparently with the desired (by the
> > product manufacturer) effect that the output product can only be
> > accessed efectively, by another instance of the application that
> > produced the malformed output in the first instance.
> 
> In this case PDF is very much a standard, if only a defacto one.  The
> only better format I can think of is Postscript (gzip'd of course!) but,
> like I said, Windows people will doubtless be baffled by this so PDF is
> an excellent alternative.
> 
> > Academics appear to be too involved in using such restrictive,
> > proprietary oriented applications, rather than teaching and practising
> > portability.
> 
> Which proprietary applications?  In the past most lecture notes have
> been distributed as Word documents -- I'd say PDF is certainly a step in
> the right direction!  I'm pretty sure the specifications for PDF have
> been openly published (although perhaps someone can correct me on this).
> 

It is my understanding, for example, that documents saved as web pages,
or, in HTML format, by that office suite (Office 2000) and by their
product Backpage 2000, or whatever it is named, can only be viewed
properly by IE5 or later, due to MS proprietary stuff included. If it
happens with saving files from the suite like that, then, it is logical
to also assume that files saved as PDF files from that suite, could be
similarly tainted. Especially when problems arise, in trying to open
those files, with non-MS applications. MS appears to tend to have this
attitude that output from its applications, should not be able to be
accessed fully, apart from the latest versions of its own applications.

Perhaps, the easiest solution, is just to save any documents produced by
that suite, as .txt files. Then they are truly, universally accessible.
But, an academic is not likely to be so accommodating.

> > It's just another symptom of the poor standards of education.
> 
> *laugh*
> 
> > I agree, in principle, with Christian; PDF files are platform
> > independent (in theory), and their use should be expanded. However, the
> > generation of PDF files should be done either by using the Acrobat
> > application for producing them (which the university should be able to
> > afford), or, some other application, that is guaranteed to produce
> > standard PDF files, without any proprietary muck in them, that can be
> > accessed and read, by any reasonable PDF file viewer.
> 
> Ummm... they're PDF files so they should work under any (functioning)
> PDF viewer.  Maybe I've gotten the wrong end of the stick here but I
> thought the problem Bill was having was not that the PDF files were in
> some way corrupted by proprietary formatting but rather that Acrobat
> Reader under Linux wasn't working properly (which it doesn't for me
> either, apparently being related to the colour depth in use).  If I'm on
> the right track here then what you've just said doesn't make any sense.
> 
> > The other problem with it, is the possessive, proprietary nature of the
> > files, with the password access, which, in effect, goes against the
> > purpose of universities; the unrestricted dissemination and sharing of
> > knowledge. Given that, under the Intellectual property regulations of
> > the university, all materials produced by academics at the university,
> > belong to the university, it may be a policy of the university, that
> > needs changing, to free up the disssemination of knowledge...
> 
> I just think protecting it with a password is rather silly.  It doesn't
> really protect the work in any way since a) it can still be freely
> redistributed and b) the password protection must be very weak indeed
> since there is no secure way of controlling content on another machine.
> Either way, xpdf supports this so it's not an issue.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Christian.

-- 

Bret Busby

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