Why do people use Adobe Acrobat?

[Brian]

I just hit a link, as many times before, that wanted to open in Acrobat. It froze up, it happens. And it takes longer to load than a web page. What's the advantage?

[SezMe]

1) Reader is free
2) Works across all platforms
3) Most self-respecting word processors (Word, WordPerfect) export to it.

[scribble]

1) Reader is free

Not Free enough. o you can download it and use it without paying fo rit. The PDF file format it use is NOT free however and in fact, wasn't it Dimitri kylarov who Adobe jut had arrested a year ago for figuring out how PDFs work?

They're ***holes.

2) Works across all platforms

So does HTML, TXT, and RTF, to name three NON-proprietary systems off the top of my head.

3) Most self-respecting word processors (Word, WordPerfect) export to it.

A) Word is not self-respecting. It's the whore of the word processing business.

B) Neither word nor wordperfect have the ability to export to PDF. (But OpenOffice does!)

---


The real answer to "Why do people use PDFs?" is:

Because people are STUPID.

[CFLarsen]

Complete control of design, layout, fonts, graphics. Also, you can format it for specific page sizes, so it looks good when printed (let's "forget" about the stupid American page sizes, though: It makes it a pain to print US PDFs...).

Since a lot of publications are already in PDF, it is easier to put it on a website, than to re-format it in HTML. It will not look nowhere as good, either.

[Soapy Sam]

I find pdfs hard to read. I never use it personally.
But I still use DOS text editors.
And pencils.

[Iconoclast]

Originally posted by Brian
I just hit a link, as many times before, that wanted to open in Acrobat. It froze up, it happens. And it takes longer to load than a web page. What's the advantage?
Don't open the link to a pdf in your browser, download it to your desktop first and then open it. The problem is that the Acrobat ActiveX plug-in is so large that IE has palpitations if it gets asked to host it. And yes, Acrobat is a huge ugly piece of software.

[SezMe]

Originally posted by scribble
3) Most self-respecting word processors (Word, WordPerfect) export to it.

A) Word is not self-respecting. It's the whore of the word processing business.
Agreed. OK, so I contradicted myself. I was just recognizing the unfortunate fact that Word is widely used.

Originally posted by scribble
3) Most self-respecting word processors (Word, WordPerfect) export to it.

B) Neither word nor wordperfect have the ability to export to PDF. (But OpenOffice does!)
Lost some credibility there. I export for WordPerfect to pdf on a weekly basis.

[Smike]

Originally posted by scribble
The real answer to "Why do people use PDFs?" is:

Because people are STUPID.

To be fair it's also so it's difficult to edit the document. But they can be really annoying, especially if you want to print a selection.

[SezMe]

Originally posted by Iconoclast
Don't open the link to a pdf in your browser ...snip...
Good advice - here's how to do it. In Acrobat, go to Edit->Preferences. Select Internet in the list. Make sure "Display PDF in Browser" is NOT checked.

Now you can view a web pdf and then decide whether to save it or not.

[scribble]

Originally posted by SezMe
Lost some credibility there. I export for WordPerfect to pdf on a weekly basis.

I'll admit I could be wrong, not having seen WordPerfect since liong before PDF were invented. I knwo for certain that Word cannot do it.

But let me ask:

Does WordPerfect create the PDF, or does Wordperfect use a print driver which loads up an Adobe-provided converter which then produces the PDF? (This is how Word achieves the functionality.)

[SezMe]

I don't know, scribble. How could I tell between the two?

But when I chose "Export to PDF" I get a form with all kinds of optons such as Version 3 or 4 or 5 of the pdf spec. I can also chose graphic handling options, whether to optimize for the web or for printing and so on. Sure doesn't sound like a print driver to me but I am not an expert in that area.

[Nasarius]

Originally posted by scribble
The PDF file format it use is NOT free however and in fact, wasn't it Dimitri kylarov who Adobe jut had arrested a year ago for figuring out how PDFs work?

That seems unlikely. xpdf, kghostview, et al. do a pretty good job of displaying PDFs on Linux. No need for Adobe software.

[Nasarius]

I think this is the guy you were talking about:
http://www.freesklyarov.org/

It looks like he was reverse-engineering copy-protected ebooks, not normal PDFs.

[TragicMonkey]

I hate PDFs with a passion. My hellacious project, that I've been working on for seven months, that I was almost finished with before Xmas....has just had the requirements altered again. Now my boss wants to convert a dynamically generated ASP web page to a PDF on the server side. According to Adobe, this might be possible, but they'd want about $30K to make custom software to do it. Other companies make software they claim does it, but none suits my particular circumstances.

Does my boss give up? No! He simply says "There must be a way!" and leaves me to figure it out. By myself. With no help. Using my nine months experience at programming and my tech school associate's degree, and a well of rage and hate so vast that if expressed in twinkly Christmas lights would outshine a hundred billion galaxies. Big galaxies. With extra-wattage spotlight stars.

To hell with PDFs!

[scribble]

Originally posted by TragicMonkey
Now my boss wants to convert a dynamically generated ASP web page to a PDF on the server side. According to Adobe, this might be possible, but they'd want about $30K to make custom software to do it. Other companies make software they claim does it, but none suits my particular circumstances.


Let's get together. I've got to do the same thing. It's sourced in C++ and/or Perl here, but it shouldn't matter.

At my last job we did the same thing by "printing" the generated document to a .PS file and using and existing postscript-to-PDF converter. I'm planning on doing something similar here.

I think my old company has open-sourced part of that software, you could use it directly. (The part that converts the source RTF to .PS) I've seen plenty of open-source libraries that can take it from there.

Send me a PM. What particular things do you need that are making it difficult?

[rockoon]

Quite simply.. with PDF, "WYSIWYG"

[scribble]

Originally posted by Nasarius
That seems unlikely. xpdf, kghostview, et al. do a pretty good job of displaying PDFs on Linux. No need for Adobe software.

Originally posted by Rockoon
Quite simply.. with PDF, "WYSIWYG"

Not on linux. It's better than trying to view a .DOC file that has a table in it in OpenOffice, but it's not 100%. And *printing* a PDF on Linux -- don't even get me started. Definately what I saw is NOT what I got.

[SezMe]

Originally posted by TragicMonkey
I hate PDFs with a passion. My hellacious project, that I've been working on for seven months, that I was almost finished with before Xmas....has just had the requirements altered again. Now my boss wants to convert a dynamically generated ASP web page to a PDF on the server side. According to Adobe, this might be possible, but they'd want about $30K to make custom software to do it. Other companies make software they claim does it, but none suits my particular circumstances.

Does my boss give up? No! He simply says "There must be a way!" and leaves me to figure it out. By myself. With no help. Using my nine months experience at programming and my tech school associate's degree, and a well of rage and hate so vast that if expressed in twinkly Christmas lights would outshine a hundred billion galaxies. Big galaxies. With extra-wattage spotlight stars.

To hell with PDFs!
Bummer :( but it sounds like your rag outta be on your boss.

[TragicMonkey]

Originally posted by SezMe
Bummer :( but it sounds like your rag outta be on your boss.

It is. He just informed me, via email, that the first half of the project, the part that I "didn't have to worry about", the part where all the parameters for my part are collected, the part that he has been "working on" for the last three months....that part, guess what? He didn't do anything, and now I have to. It's taken me seven months to get this half done, and now he wants me to do the first half as well? With the same deadline, THIS THURSDAY??

Thanks for the suggestions, Scribble, but I'm dumping that part of the project squarely on my boss.

I was planning on looking for a better job anyway.

[Doc Dish]

Originally posted by Brian
I just hit a link, as many times before, that wanted to open in Acrobat. It froze up, it happens. And it takes longer to load than a web page. What's the advantage?

One way of speeding up Acrobat's loading process is to disable unnecessary plugins (detailed here (http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/darrell.norton/archive/2003/10/06/2095.aspx))

This is for Acrobat Reader v6.x. Version 7.0 is supposedly faster to load

[LJRuss]

Ha Ha HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Welcome to programming in the real world be-atch.

I have found that mass amounts of alcohol work.


By the way, Happy New Year!!!

[balrog666]

Actually Word can import or export pdfs with some small (cheap) add-on software.

Also, Word will tend to eff up the formatting of large documents when they are imported from many sources and will screw up linked items if they are not of the same Office vintage.

Converting to pdf gives you back the correct formats, hides what you want hidden(including previous versions/comments/links/etc), fixes the linked items, and simplifies distribution.

Not to mention WYSIWYG.

[Whyatt]

Originally posted by scribble
Not on linux. It's better than trying to view a .DOC file that has a table in it in OpenOffice, but it's not 100%. And *printing* a PDF on Linux -- don't even get me started. Definately what I saw is NOT what I got.

Hmm, thats strange, I use radhat9 (gnome) at work and mandrake10.1 (kde) at home, and I have no problems at all with pdfs.

Could be your printer? But then linux is a varied beast!

[voidx]

Originally posted by scribble
I'll admit I could be wrong, not having seen WordPerfect since liong before PDF were invented. I knwo for certain that Word cannot do it.

But let me ask:

Does WordPerfect create the PDF, or does Wordperfect use a print driver which loads up an Adobe-provided converter which then produces the PDF? (This is how Word achieves the functionality.)
Its called Adobe Distiller and it has always worked fine for me using Word. Yes it uses a print driver to export the document to .PDF. Is there some advantage to the straight export method used in OpenOffice? The advantage of Distiller is that any program that can print, can now export documents to .PDF via Distiller. I've tried this with many programs and it has always worked sufficiently well.

[voidx]

Now as for the topic of this thread, it seems you have trouble opening .PDF's that are linked on websites and open through the browser. Admittedly this can be hit and miss, but its mostly due to the knowledge of the person that put the .PDF online. The main problem with .PDF's is the filesize. If not done properly they can ballon in size very quickly, which of course would make opening them through a browser that much more difficult. However common sense as well as add-ins for Adobe can greatly reduce the size of the file while still keeping the quality good.

Some people go Adobe crazy, but its because its so easy to use. In many cases people could have imported an image say or schematic just to a plain image file and it would be smaller, but instead they plop it into Adobe. Those sorts of things can start to cause problems, but again, its not a problem with Adobe, just a problem with how some people choose to use it.

[cesium]

I definantly thought the biggest problem with .pdf's were thier filesize (we had dialup). This can be lessened with the proper aplication of vector and raster graphics, fewer layers (or removing the layers), and eliminating any number of things from the file.

The biggest benefit of pdf's is the fact that they not only work on many platforms, but things look the same on each platform, pdf's are like an image file in the sense that they can mantain size and positioning, but they take up less space (then an image of the page at comperable resolution)

Pdf's are great for forms, books, brocures, and anything that has a specific layout. HTML has it's streingths, but problems can result because of differences in screen resolution, text size settings in the browser, and fonts used by the browser.

.doc isnt quite as cross-platform as pdf, also, .doc dosent have the best support for things like vector graphics and all of the other nifty features that adobe software affords (like indesign).

Price is another problem, there are pdf converters, but these do not give as good control as adobe software. The fact that pdf's are write-only and there is less software avalible for it also may make people like it.

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Whyatt
Hmm, thats strange, I use radhat9 (gnome) at work and mandrake10.1 (kde) at home, and I have no problems at all with pdfs.

Could be your printer? But then linux is a varied beast!
I use Debian at work, and print out pages and pages of PDF every day. I also rarely have problems. When I do, it seems to be the aging and temperamental printer I use that is at fault.

[jeremyp]

Originally posted by scribble
1) Reader is free

Not Free enough. o you can download it and use it without paying fo rit. The PDF file format it use is NOT free however and in fact, wasn't it Dimitri kylarov who Adobe jut had arrested a year ago for figuring out how PDFs work?



Well that's wrong. Why would Adobe arrest anybody for "figuring out PDF" when the specification is freely available on the Adobe web site (http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/index_reference.html)?

[DangerousBeliefs]

PDF was originally designed for professional publishing. The reason it is a godsend is because PDF, properly exported, is WYSIWYG.

Imagine the relief of a publisher who maybe doesn't have Pagemaker 6.x or is missing the ObscureLite Ital font. If a person brings it to them in PDF format, most of their problems are taken care of by PDF. It can even do color seperations.

The spinoff advantage of PDF is that putting it on a webpage allows people to download and print (that's what it is mention for, not viewing online) documents as they were intended to be viewed.

PDF also allows indexing of PDF documents so that a library can be placed on CD, DVD, or other storage media and easily retrieved.

PDF is a tool and a useful one when used for what it was intended.

[Tricky]

I always assumed, and correct me if this is incorrect, that people use Adobe because of its complete lack of functionality. Because there are no "bells and whistles", file size is smaller, thus, more portable.

No? Well, I'm a software idiot anyway.

[Ove]

No? Well, I'm a software idiot anyway.

No you are partly right. We use it for our "standards" because PDF makes them "tamper-proof". OK OK i know you CAN tamper with them if you got the right software but it is much more difficult than f.inst a .DOC format. And you definitely wouldn't do it by accident. If we published in Word f.inst there would be a much higher risk that the reciever accidentially messed up the document.

WYSIWYG......... Simply.;)

[PixyMisa]

Okay, first thing: The specification for PDF is completely open. Anyone can freely create programs to read or write PDFs. No royalties payable, no patents, no nothing.

Second, PDF was created as a standardised way to send documents (books, magazines, journal articles, what have you) to be printed. Before that people used either Postscript or any of a hundred proprietary formats. The problem with the hundred proprietary formats is obvious. The problem with Postscript is that it is not simply a document description format like PDF, it's a full-featured programming language. A flawed Postscript file can do all sorts of horrible things that PDF simply can't do.

The reason people use PDF on the web is usually that there is already a printed version of (whatever it is). With PDF they can give you a copy that is formatted exactly the same, and it takes no extra work. Bing, done.

As for the problems with the Acrobat plugin in IE, I'd suggest you stop using IE. I've seen this happen in Mozilla, but it's rare.

(I generate about 20,000 PDF files a day. Whee!)

[Graculus]

Originally posted by scribble
Not Free enough. o you can download it and use it without paying fo rit. The PDF file format it use is NOT free however and in fact, wasn't it Dimitri kylarov who Adobe jut had arrested a year ago for figuring out how PDFs work?

They're ***holes.


Originally posted by jeremyp
Why would Adobe arrest anybody for "figuring out PDF" when the specification is freely available

They didn't. As a matter of fact, Adobe helped Sklyarov's defense.

Here's what happened:

Sklyarov and the company he worked for (ElcomSoft) produced an eBook reader by reverse engineering. They did not believe that what they diid was illegal. Adobe was miffed, and mentioned it to The Powers That Be®. ElcomSoft removed the software from their site. The Powers That Be® then decided to lure Sklyarov to the US and arrest him. Adobe didn't expect that (apparently they had envisioned a civil suit against ElcomSoft), and, after some poking from the EFF, Adobe recommended Sklyarov's release and withdrew it's support of the charges. The Justice Department proceeded anyways, even though the "victim" had already said "Oh, nevermind".

So the Sklyarove case didn't have anything to do with PDFs at all, and Adobe are not a**holes.

[DangerousBeliefs]

Originally posted by Graculus
They didn't. As a matter of fact, Adobe helped Sklyarov's defense.

Here's what happened:

Sklyarov and the company he worked for (ElcomSoft) produced an eBook reader by reverse engineering. They did not believe that what they diid was illegal. Adobe was miffed, and mentioned it to The Powers That Be®. ElcomSoft removed the software from their site. The Powers That Be® then decided to lure Sklyarov to the US and arrest him. Adobe didn't expect that (apparently they had envisioned a civil suit against ElcomSoft), and, after some poking from the EFF, Adobe recommended Sklyarov's release and withdrew it's support of the charges. The Justice Department proceeded anyways, even though the "victim" had already said "Oh, nevermind".

So the Sklyarove case didn't have anything to do with PDFs at all, and Adobe are not a**holes.

Funny part about that whole story... you can defeat any eCopy protection with "Print Screen" and an OCR program.

If somebody wants to copy an entire book, all they need is time. If they couple it to some macros, they can do it in about 30 minutes.

[cesium]

No copy protection is perfect, because even the most advanced digital copy protection/encryption stuff is useless when the data is converted to analogue so humans (or lesser devices) can understand it. You can connect a VCR to a dvd player, do print screen on ebooks, use hardware or software to record the output of those subscription music services which let you listen but not download. The one problem is that if the data is not black and white type data (like text, it is either a, b, c... rather then sound where there are many chances for data to be lost). I personaly prefer a 1000 stage 16384 bit random binary hash using thermal noise random generation, it is impossible for anyone to steal your data.


As for WYSWYG editors, I personaly prefer YAFIYGI (You Asked For It, You Got It) editors.

[Ove]

No copy protection is perfect, because even the most advanced digital copy protection/encryption stuff is useless when the data is converted to analogue so humans (or lesser devices) can understand it. You can connect a VCR to a dvd player, do print screen on ebooks, use hardware or software to record the output of those subscription music services which let you listen but not download. The one problem is that if the data is not black and white type data (like text, it is either a, b, c... rather then sound where there are many chances for data to be lost). I personaly prefer a 1000 stage 16384 bit random binary hash using thermal noise random generation, it is impossible for anyone to steal your data.

I don't think Acrobat users are that worried about copy protection, WE certainly aren't. We ARE worried that some clown will accidentially delete a line or mess up the design of the form we sent him (which is terribly easy if it is a Word document). :)

You don't "accidentially" change a PDF file.;)

[Yaotl]

Originally posted by Ove

You don't "accidentially" change a PDF file.;)

"But it says right here on the PDF you sent me!" I've only done that once, but it was fun messing around in Acrobat.

[Ove]

"But it says right here on the PDF you sent me!" I've only done that once, but it was fun messing around in Acrobat.
:D :D :D