What's the Deal with Acrobat?

[tofu]

I'm sorry that this has to be said, Acrobat Reader is crap!

I bought a new laptop and it had the current version of Acrobat Reader - version 7.0 - installed on it. I read a lot of pdfs for work and such, but it's been a long time since I had to install a new version of Acrobat so I had no idea how bad it had gotten.

1.It takes several seconds to load, during which time you stare at a splash page and watch “things it's loading” flash by. By showing you “things it's loading” it makes you think it's doing something really important, and thus worth the wait, but I promise you, it's not. More on this later.

2.Every second or third time I started it, it would pop up a huge dialog box begging me to upgrade.

3. It has some process that it put in the registry to load every time windows starts.

Fortunately, I still have a copy of Acrobat Reader version 4.05 laying around. I was able to uninstall the abomination that was 7.0 and install 4. What joy. Let me tell you how a PDF reader should work.

1.It loads instantly. To give you an idea of what “instantly” means, imagine a text document. You click on it and notepad opens instantly. Well guess what, now my PDF reader does the same thing. This all begs the question: what was all that extra stuff that version 7.0 loads? I have yet to see a PDF that version 4.0 did not render correctly. Even PDFs with advanced features like editable text boxes and password protection open up just fine in version 4.0. In case you didn't know, Adobe does not own the PDF format. It is an open standard. To my knowledge, that standard is pretty-well set in stone by now. So once you have a piece of software that reads the standard, what can you possibly add to it to take you from version 4 to version 7? I can't think of anything. For all I know, Acrobat version 7 calculates a few hundred digits of pi while loading. It certainly doesn't have a legitimate reason to take that long.

2.Version 4 NEVER bugs me to register. It's a reader. I click a PDF document. I read the PDF document. It really doesn't need to get any more complicated than that. I'm aware that if I want to create PDFs I need to buy something (or use ps2pdf on the nearest linux box).

3.There is nothing permanently in the registry. Why would there be?

So anyway, seeing the contrast between old and new version just kind of erked me a little. I would actually kind of like to know what the heck Adobe is thinking.

[TheBlackCat]

I turned off the adobe autoloader on my computer, it doesn't speed up the loading process at all and eats memory. It never bothers me to register, though. I also don't have a splash screen, it loads in about 1.6 seconds. So I am not exactly sure what problem you are having.

Ah, I figured it out. Go to edit-->preferences-->startup. Near the bottom there will be an option for "display splash screen". Uncheck that. I must have unchecked it years ago and forgot about it and the preferences were just carried through successive versions of acrobat. There is also an option for "Show messages and automatically update", I have that checked but unchecking it may fix your problem. The first thing I do when I get a new program is go through and edit the preferences, especially turning off annoyances like that. Most programs have them, so it has just because a habit to find them and stop them before I do anything else. The autoloader can be turned off in msconfig (go to start-->run-->msconfig-->startup and uncheck the "adobe reader speed launch" entry).

And you don't need to buy anything to make PDFs, Ghostscript (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/) is legal and makes them for free (GNU GPL). It is pretty basic but is all I need for my purposes.

[ToSeek]

I use Apple's Preview rather than Acrobat Reader on my Mac as my default PDF application for just the reasons you state: it comes up instantly, and it handles all the documents I normally deal with. So why bother?

[mugaliens]

Adobe has long been known for their incredibly large and slow programs. I have shareware that's 1/10th the cost, 1/10th the size, and about five times the speed of several of Adobe's programs, yet they do the same as Adobe's.

If I'm not mistaken, the main issue is that their programs are developed for the MAC, then ported to Intel. I've heard that they're programs are significantly fast on a Mac. It's nothing inherent with the Mac, just that the software is optimized for it.

[tofu]

Just an update. I found another free PDF reader that looks pretty good. It's less than a meg and doesn't even install itself. No registry. No nothing. cool.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

[ToSeek]

Adobe has long been known for their incredibly large and slow programs. I have shareware that's 1/10th the cost, 1/10th the size, and about five times the speed of several of Adobe's programs, yet they do the same as Adobe's.

If I'm not mistaken, the main issue is that their programs are developed for the MAC, then ported to Intel. I've heard that they're programs are significantly fast on a Mac. It's nothing inherent with the Mac, just that the software is optimized for it.

They're not that great on the Mac, either.

[SeanF]

Just an update. I found another free PDF reader that looks pretty good. It's less than a meg and doesn't even install itself. No registry. No nothing. cool.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
That's pretty nice, tofu. Thanks.

Although I would like to know under what numbering system 1,330,002 bytes qualifies as "less than 1MB." :)

[GDwarf]

That's pretty nice, tofu. Thanks.

Although I would like to know under what numbering system 1,330,002 bytes qualifies as "less than 1MB." :)
Yep, 1.26MB. However, it would fit on a floppy.

[tofu]

Although I would like to know under what numbering system 1,330,002 bytes qualifies as "less than 1MB." :)

oops. My eyes must have jumped down to the converter program which is 898kb

[mugaliens]

Any chance for a free PDF creator that works with all programs from Word/Excel etc. to anything else?

[TheBlackCat]

The one I posted above, ghostscript, does that. All you have to do is "Print to File" in word or excel or any other program. That will save it is a postscript file which ghostscript can then convert into a PDF. It didn't work with my real printer, so I set up a special virtual printer specifically for making postscript files. I use the Apple Laserwriter II built-in windows driver, I don't have the printer in real life, I just told my compter to automatically print to file whenever I tries to use that printer. (right-click on the printer, click the "ports" tab, then check the "FILE: Print to File" check box). It works perfectly, makes really high-quality PDFs with vector text (i.e. you can enlarge it up to any size without losing text quality, just make sure you always use truetype fonts and not bitmapped fonts).

[tofu]

Speaking of creating PDFs, why don't word processors use this as their native format? After all, the spec is open and free to use, and as far as I know it's pretty much set in stone. Also, it was designed to be WYSIWUG - which is why mugaliens wants to create PDFs, he wants to be sure that a file prints the same from everyone's printer.

I'm sure there's a good reason why programs like openoffice don't save to PDF, but I don't know what it is.

edit to add: I'm wrong - PDF is NOT an open format. It's owned by Adobe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF

[TheBlackCat]

The issue, I bet, is that Adobe has control of the PDF format. They control what it can do and how it changes with each release. By using their own native format, programs like openoffice can have complete control of their format. They get to control what information is stored, when, and how. They get to modify the format to guarantee compatibility with their software. They can make sure that any upgrades to the software are matched by upgrades to the format, and that any upgrades to the software and/or format are (or aren't) reverse-compatible with earlier versions of their software and format. Finally, they get to control how long the format is supported and upgraded. If adobe suddenly decides to stop supporting the PDF format than all the other companies that depend on it are out of luck. It is all a matter of control, groups like openoffice don't want to have to be at the mercy of some unpredictable company like Adobe.

I would suspect that PDF also has some limitations that may make it very good for transferring documents faithfully between systems, but may limit its usability. Adbone has also put a lot of random stuff in acrobat (like 3-D graphics support) that causes overhead and complications that other companies probably don't want to have to deal with.

[HenrikOlsen]

Additionally, PDF is only a presentation format, it's really bad when you want to read it and get the original document out again.

[tofu]

Any chance for a free PDF creator that works with all programs from Word/Excel etc. to anything else?

Download Open Office. (openoffice.org) It will open word/excel documents flawlessly and right there on the file menu it has an "export to PDF" option.

[SeanF]

oops. My eyes must have jumped down to the converter program which is 898kb
Nope, your eyes just jumped to the point on the webpage where it says, "Foxit Reader is small (the download is less than 1MB)..." It's the website owner's mistake, not yours. :)