[plug] acrobat reader and printing

[Bret Busby]

Bret Busby wrote:
> 
> Christian wrote:
> >
<snip>
> 
> > > It's just another symptom of the poor standards of education.
> >
> > *laugh*
> >

Sorry; I thought that portability is (or, was) a serious component of
education in the area of computing education. However, I notice that
portability is not considered, or, taught, to any significant extent.

<snip>

> > > 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.
> >

In thinking about this further, if the academic involved, insists on
restricting access to the files, via the use of passwords, the academic
can implement that, as has been done in other units, by using password
logins to restrict access to the parent directory for the unit (or,
other directory that is applicable), so not affecting the individual
files.

Surely, the academic involved, is aware of that?

Also, given the multi-platform versions that are available, if the
academic wanted to provide formatted materials, surely, the academic
could have used Star Office, which is free, and the CD's have at least
three platform-dependent versions, so that students can choose which
platform version they install and use, and, should be able to achieve
the same results, regardless of OS platform.

That, also, increases portability, to some extent, and, would retain any
formatting.