[linux] Re: Adobe Reader 7.0 for Linux entirely bogus?

[Will Affleck-Asch]

That's my favorite PDF reader too.

Except mine's called HP LaserJet 2200 Series PCL6 ...

Will Affleck-Asch
Research Consultant, Informatics
SGPP www.sgpp.org
University of Washington, Biochemistry
Health Science Center K-418
Ph: 206.685.7047 Fax: 206.685.7002
willaffl at u.washington.edu

On Mon, 16 May 2005 Joshua Daniel Franklin <joshuadf at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> Subject: Re: [linux]  Adobe Reader 7.0 for Linux entirely bogus?
>
> RL 'Bob' Morgan wrote:
>> Now that I've used it for a bit I'd have to
>> say that it is the most appallingly horrible piece of software I've ever
>> seen released by a major software house.
>
> Well, my experiences with 7 haven't been that bad, but I normally only
> have one PDF open at a time. I haven't had it crash on me and like
> Garrett said my scrollwheel works--plus I can actually cut&paste (unlike
> gpdf) and it works with some PDFs that have given xpdf trouble. This is
> on Fedora Core 3 and RHEL 3 and 4. I will never go back to 5, it offends
> my sensibilities.
>
> My current favorite PDF reader, though, is the "HP LaserJet 4000N"
> sitting close to my desk...
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 09:30:30 -0700
> From: Yi Qiang <yqiang at washington.edu>
> Subject: Re: [linux]  Adobe Reader 7.0 for Linux entirely bogus?
> To: Linux/Unix Users Group at the UW <linux at u.washington.edu>
> Message-ID: <4288CAA6.6030400 at washington.edu>
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>
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> RL 'Bob' Morgan wrote:
>>
>> In my job I'm obliged to read lots of PDFs, and have always found the
>> Adobe (Acrobat, mumble, whatever name they pick today) readers to be
>> marginal but still the most likely to work reasonably.  I was excited
>> that they were coming out, at long last with a 7.0 version more or less
>> matching other platforms.  Now that I've used it for a bit I'd have to
>> say that it is the most appallingly horrible piece of software I've ever
>> seen released by a major software house.
>>
>> First of all it uses the everything-in-one-window approach that probably
>> made sense for Windows 3.1 applications but is profoundly suboptimal at
>> this late date.  I have been known to have a dozen or so PDFs open at
>> once, looking at the alongside web pages, word-processing docs, emacs
>> windows, etc, grouping all these things by topic rather than by the app
>> that handles them.  But Reader 7.0 says they all have to be in one
>> window. I guess the way around this is to use the plugin to read these
>> docs in my web browser.  Besides being wasteful of screen space, I have
>> always found this to be the best way to get my browser to crash, so this
>> isn't much of an option.
>>
>> But far worse really is the fact that the program is an unbelievable CPU
>> and memory hog.  I just started it up, opened one document, and waited a
>> few hours.  Now the acroread process appears to be chugging along at 15%
>> CPU (which really sucks when running on battery; did I mention my system
>> is a laptop?) and is up to about 500M in size (so I killed it before it
>> took over completely).  What are these people thinking?
>>
>> So is it just me?  Can they really have put out a package this awful?
>> Btw I'm running an IBM ThinkPad X31 with 1G memory, and FC3.  I guess
>> I'll go back to 5.10, or look around for other possibilities (I've seen
>> claims that KPDF is good, but I'm not a KDE user).
>>
>>  - RL "Bob"
>>
> You might want to try 'evince'.  It's still in the very early stages of
> development but already extremely usable.
>
> Yi