Adobe products are usually overpriced and sometimes too bloated and less
reliable than alternatives. Here is a need to distinguish between PDF specification
(which is open and nothing new in comparison with Postscript) and Adobe
implementation of this specification: Acrobat Reader is indeed a horrible
bloatware.
Adobe PDF viewer (Acrobat Reader) since version 5 is bloatware and it
is unclear what it is doing on your PC besides displaying files. Acrobat
utterly takes the first price when it comes to being the most arrogant,
bloated, buggy, piece of software ever made, ever. I hope Microsoft
will gain some traction with their
XPS [microsoft.com] format.
In its infinite wisdom Adobe make it to behave like a daemon: after you
views the first PDG file it remains memory even if you do not have any opened
PDF files. In addition it bestows users with another rogue process
called AcroTray. Latest versions (both 7 and 8) are complex and buggy (especially
on Windows 2000) and they consume too much resources on 256M/512M PCs to
be useful. Often they crash when you try to shutdown PC.
People often criticize Microsoft but they often forget about Adobe.
And in certain areas Microsoft can be a viable alternative to the Adobe
products:
Now let's discuss the problem with Acrobat bloatware in more detail
because this is the most annoying product that a typical enterprise user
encounters daily. Here is selection of rather typical opinions about Adobe
Acrobat:
As you can see there are problems with Acrobat and it might well worth
to try to find an alternative or avoid PDF format whenever possible.
After all this is yet another proprietary format from a very questionable
company.
Ever wondered how to render PDF-s into individual pictures page by
page? It is really simple.
Warning to all of those who are allergic to command line: The
following method does imply use (albeit very simple) of CLI.
Here we will be using a tool called ImageMagick. This is a widely
available tool with unparalleled versatility in a variety of areas,
but is by no means the only one: there are plenty of other tools to
do the same thing. The following is only one method of many.
1) So first of all you will need to install ImageMagick. In Ubuntu
you would do:
sudo apt-get install imagemagick
2) Then open up a terminal, and browse to the location of the PDF
you want to convert. Say, if your PDF was in /home/username/PDFs,
you would do the following:
cd /home/username/PDFs
3) Let’s say that you have a PDF file called test.pdf and
you want it to convert to PNG files. You also want these PNG files’
filename to begin page. Then you would run:
convert test.pdf page.png
This will give you as many PNG files named page-01.png, page-02.png,
… as there are pages in your original PDF.
If you wanted JPEG files instead just run:
convert test.pdf page.jpg
You might also want to control the resolution of the resulting image
files. To do that you must specify the -density option. It
is hard to predict what number you should give, so try to experiment
to get the desired result. If you wanted a density of, say, 800, you
would run:
convert -density 800 test.pdf page.png
Want to select certain pages only? No problem, to convert only the
first page – run:
convert "test.pdf[0]" page.png
You may also specify a range. So to convert the first three pages
run:
convert "test.pdf[0-2]" page.png
Several ranges are also possible:
convert "test.pdf[0-2,4-6]" page.png
(Note that the output files will be consecutively named in the latter
example, so you will get files page-0.png, -1, -2, -3, -4 and -5.png.
NOT as you would expect page-0.png, -1, -2, -4, -5 and -6)
Edit: If you are inclined to use another conversion utility, try
pdftoppm from the package poppler-utils. Works very
well, too…
That’s really it!
Hope you found this useful!
Nice document viewer that can display pft and convert them to text even
if Acrobat refuses to do it.
Just last month, Adobe issued a fix for an Acrobat Reader hole that
attackers had been exploiting for months, after issuing a patch for
a critical vulnerability in Flash player
the month before.
... ... ...
"Yesterday at RSA security conference, F-Secure's
chief research officer
recommended
dropping Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files because of the huge
amount of targeted attacks against it. Instead, he pointed to
PDFreaders.org, a website maintaining
a list of free and open source PDF viewers."
Using poppler-tools and psutils, you can extract a range of pages
from a larger PDF file. For example, if you want to extract pages
11–14 of the PDF file afile.pdf, you could use the following command:
$ pdftops afile.pdf - | psselect -p11-14 | ps2pdf - file-p11-14.pdf
The pdftops command converts the PDF file to PostScript; the
psselect command selects the relevant pages from the PostScript,
and the ps2pdf command converts the selected PostScript into a new
PDF file.
Converting a PDF file into an HTML or a XML file has been made
easy by a small useful utility called PDFTOHTML. PdftoHTml is a
Xpdf based tool which can convert PDF files to HTML or XML format.
PDFTOHTML also supports encrypted files and support for images in
the PDF file by converting to PNG images files.
The extension installs as easily as any OpenOffice.org or Firefox
extension. OpenOffice.org extensions cannot register file associations
with the operating system (though you can set them up manually),
but importing a PDF is as simple as clicking on File and then Open.
The import process takes a long time compared to opening an OpenOffice.org
document because of the necessary guesswork caused by the limitations
of PDF.
For a test, I exported
ODF_text_reference_v1_1.odt from OpenOffice.org and imported
it again. When the initial screen appeared with the results, I stared
at it in disbelief. It looked just like the original. The text,
layout, font faces, text colors, bold, italics, underline, and picture
were well preserved.
Below are the original in Writer and the imported document in
Draw. Doesn't it take more than a glance to identify which is the
original?
Alternative PDF import
OpenOffice.org did not pioneer PDF import—not even in the open
source market. Some of the work in OpenOffice.org is done by xpdf,
a PDF viewer. To import PDFs, open source alternatives include pdftohtml,
Abiword, KWord, and Inkscape. There are also a host of proprietary
applications.
Depending on your needs, there are other ways to import PDFs
into OpenOffice.org. To import PDFs into Writer or Impress, you
may be able to combine the new PDF import extension with copy and
paste. If you just need to extract text, copy the text in Adobe
Acrobat Reader and paste it into OpenOffice.org. This retains some
formatting.
About: html2ps is a PHP equivalent of the popular Perl
script by the same name that accurately converts HTML with images,
complex tables (including rowspan/colspan), layers/divs, and CSS
styles to Postscript and PDF. Unlike most other HTML2PS/HTML2PDF
converters, it offers good CSS 2.1 support and is very tolerant
to non-valid HTML. It can convert even CSS-intense sites like aol.com
and msn.com.
Changes: A large number of layout engine fixes and improvements
were made.
About: pisa converts HTML to PDF using the ReportLab Toolkit,
the HTML5lib, and pyPdf. It supports HTML 5 and CSS 2.1 (and some
of CSS 3). The main benefit of this tool that a user with Web skills
like HTML and CSS is able to generate PDF templates very quickly
without learning new technologies.
Changes: New features: barcode and a table of contents.
Many bugfixes. Better CSS support.
pdf2djvu 0.4.2
About: pdf2djvu creates DjVu files from PDF files. It's
able to extract: graphics, text layer, hyperlinks, document outline
(bookmarks), and metadata.
It's sad that Adobe owns Flash :-(
Silverlight is Microsoft's answer to Flash, more or less. It's
supposed to make Web applications more GUI-like and introduce fancy
things like 3D graphics and advanced user interfaces to Web applications.
... ... ...
Not really... they serve similar goals, but its really MS's way
of getting the (MUCH more powerful)
.NET development environment in the hands of rich client content
web developers.
The uptake is slow, but IMO its really a better technology than
Flash. It gives far better language tools to the programmers and
provides much better separation of design, interface and code where
doing larger projects with bigger teams will be easier.
Silverlight 1.0 was very flash-like -- the framework wasn't fully
fleshed out as far as what you could present to the user, but the
newer releases provide full GUI toolkits.
Lets put it this way -- you wouldn't
(no matter what Adobe thinks) build an enterprise application with
Flash. Some smaller teams may play around with it,
but it wouldn't happen successfully in the broad market. I personally
don't believe the same can be said about Silverlight.
Freeware.
Easy PDF to TEXT converter is a must
have tool for document authors creating a lot of editable text based
on existing PDF documents and citing other writings presented as
PDF documents. It has the exact layout and formatting that enables
you convert PDF to TEXT preserving original layout, it also can
autorecognize the rotated pages and save results optimized for convenient
reading and editing. You can convert PDF documents containing text
in different languages, such as: English, French, German, Italian,
Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Slovenian, Swedish, Danish,
Greek. Also, PDF to TEXT converter allows you specify your PDF documents
password prior to converting password-protected PDF files to text.
1. The layout of pdf document is preserved.
2. Don't need any third party products(such as Adobe Acrobat or
Adobe Acrobat reader)
3. Support LZW encoded pdf documents.
4. Supports English, French, German, Italian and other languages.
5. You can Drag&Drop pdf document to finish conversion.
6. Can convert the whole folder( recursive or not)
7. Can convert pdf files from different location of your hard drives
at one time.
8. Can save your converting pdf file list for future use.
9. Can output page ranges of the document.
10. Can set the page break string to separate pages.
11. Can set output page number with page break string.
12. Can browse the pdf file's information(Title/Auther/Create date...)
through graphic user interface.
13. Have the option to output pdf file's information to the output
text file.
14. Can set the output folder for individual pdf file or all the
pdf files in the converting list.
15. Support Unicode, muliti-bytes languages.
16. Support Type0, Type1, Type3, TrueType, CIDFont fonts.
"For months, users of Adobe Creative Suite 3 have been wondering
why some of the applications
regularly connect to what looks like a
private IP address but is actually a public domain address belonging
to the web analytics company
Omniture.
Now
allegations of user spying are
getting
louder, prompting Adobe Photoshop product manager John Nack
to
respond, though many remain
unsatisfied with his explanation."
Lies, Lies and Adobe Spies
Yes, I am a tin foil hat guy. The sky is falling, the NSA
is listening and Adobe is watching how many times you open your
programs. Okay, the first two can’t be PROVEN but I can show
you that Adobe is spying on users application habits.
When you launch a CS3 application the application pings out
to what looks like an IP address - and internal IP address:
192.168.112.2O7.
That makes sense, right? Adobe wants to be sure you aren’t
running multiple copies of their programs…. Wait something is
wrong here.
The first clue something is fishy is that I don’t use a 192.168.xxx.xxx
numbering scheme in my network. Secondly, if you look at the
address
Little Snitch is displaying, the last “numbers” of the IP
address (2O7) look funny. Also, IP address
don’t end in any .com/net/org suffix.
Turns out that
192.168.112.2O7.net
is owned by
Omniture,
a huge behavioral analytics firm. Hmmmmmm, anybody curious why
Adobe is doing this? Anybody care to sniff packets? I sense
an invasion of privacy here!
Update Adobe Replies To Privacy Spy Concerns CenterNetworks - Web
2.0 News, Opinions and Insights from New York
Subject:
I have no problem with AdobeI have no problem with Adobe
phoning home - a lot of apps do it. The biggest issue for me: why
Adobe is trying to hide the fact.
I can't wait for their response which we can all guarantee will
be BS. It's apparent the feeble attempt at cloaking this is intentional
- best thing they can do is fess up to it.
Subject:
'phoning home' not a problem?I find it somewhat disturbing,
Michael, that you have no problem with software phoning home. Now
it might be completely innocuous - perhaps something as simple as
polling for an update (a quick HTTP request of a file which is then
checked, if you will); but in the end, at the very least your IP
address and typically thus location + time are then logged by some
server... and for no particularly good reason unless you -wanted-
it to do so.
However, a lot of software that 'phones home' sends more than just
an HTTP request. It might send some personal data, usage statistics,
set/check/track cookies, etc.
Think Microsoft's earlier plans for WGA - phone home regularly,
if something is amiss then toss Windows into a reduced functionality
mode.. the chances of false positives having made them change their
mind on that for the most part.
I'm part of a software development company, and all of our functionality
that automatically accesses the internet is:
1. disabled by default
2. easily enabled/disabled by the user from a central location
3. documented in its own documentation appendix on:
3.1 what it sends (i.e. default things like HTTP GET headers as
well as whatever custom data we send)
3.2 why it has to send what it sends
3.3 where it sends it
3.4 how to disable it
3.5 what it retrieves
3.6 why it retrieves it
4. In its basic network traffic, entirely clear on what it connects
to (e.g. "updates.example.com", and "example.com/news.html")
All of the rest of the internet-accessing functionality is non-automatic
and thus always opt-in; the user choosing the option being explicit
consent.
I like to think that we're doing the right thing there.
by fermion
(181285)
It is not a misleading server name, at least not
anymore. Cognizant web users know 2o7.net, or whatever, is the cookie
tracking site, and mostly blocks them. This company though legitimate,
does smell of sleaze. It was one of the first companies to use such
social confusion, replacement of the '0' with 'o' so that in the
days when one manually entered the domains to block, they would
block the wrong domain. They are legitimate, and companies that
work with them are legitimate, but the original sleaze factor is
always there, and is obviously going to be transferred to clients.
This then leads to the question of why Adobe is using them for
applications, which leads to think what has been acquired in the
past year or so. I know. Macromedia. You know, that company that
produces complicated resources hogging web content that unlike other
resource hogging content cannot be filtered by most web browsers.
I had hoped that Adobe might soften the rules and ship a flash player
that was less user hostile, but no such new player exists. So, can
we presume that instead of the user friendly Adobe culture positively
affecting the old macromedia products, that the end user hostile
macromedia culture is infecting the adobe products.
OTOH, this product is a web design product, and most web designers
get their money from ad revenue, so I would hardly think that the
users of the product would have much problem with working with 2o7,
kind of a necessary evil sort of thing. I can't imagine why adobe
would use them at the design level, but overall I agree that it
will be of no big deal to users of the product.
To me, it is another step in the downfall of Adobe.
by Zymergy
(803632)
*
Clarification: That is
...'2o7.net' as in 'Two-Ocsar-Seven.net' *NOT* 'Two-Zero-Seven.net'
The Opt-Out "Explanation" page is here:
http://www.omniture.com/privacy/2o7 [omniture.com]
Still, the dubious address
http://192.168.112.2o7.net/
[2o7.net] appears to be some variation of Social Engineering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(computer_security)
[wikipedia.org]
This might explain some of Adobe's seeming software bloating (like
Acrobat Reader, etc...)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Acrobat+reader+bloat [google.com]
November 29, 2007 |
Linux.com
For many average users, GNU/Linux support for PDF files may seem
reasonably advanced. They can create PDF files in programs like
OpenOffice.org, read them with programs like Kpdf, and edit them
in programs like pdftk or PDFedit. But that's not the whole story,
says José Marchesi, founder of the recently created
GNU PDF
project. "Unfortunately, there are a lot of missing features in
the existing free implementations," he says. That's the main reason
why the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has declared GNU PDF a
high priority project, and is actively seeking donations to
speed its progress.
Marchesi is a long-time support of the GNU Project, the umbrella
organization for free software projects connected to the FSF. In
1999, he founded GNU Spain, and he later assisted in the creation
of GNU Italy and GNU Mexico. He has also contributed to GNU Ghostscript,
GNU gv, and GNU Ferret, the first two of which provide support for
both PDF and the closely related PostScript format. In addition,
Marchesi performs what he calls "random works" in the GNU Project,
such as writing internal code and editing Web pages as needed.
Marchesi says he first became aware of the need for better free
PDF support a few years ago in his role as maintainer of gv. In
December 2005, Marchesi tried to update the Ghostscript PDF interpreter
that gv uses, only to find it was technically impractical. The solution,
he decided, was to attack the problem at a more basic level, and,
after he discussed the problem with members of the FSF and GNU Project,
GNU PDF was born.
The reasons for a new PDF project
According to Marchesi, full support for PDF is urgent for a number
of reasons, both technical and political.
On the technical level, once Marchesi started investigating,
he discovered a great deal of PDF functionality that is either missing
or incomplete: "interactive features (forms, annotations), the management
of embedded contents (sounds and movies), execution of JavaScript
to perform forms validation, 3-D artwork, accessibility, Web capturing,
[and] management of document collections."
Many users are unaware of these lacks, either because they never
use such features or because, Marchesi says, "The PDF standard is
quite careful when providing backward compatibility: When a PDF
consumer application (such as a viewer) finds an unknown construct
(such as 3-D artwork), it can (and should) ignore it. But in fact
you may be missing information."
The GNU Project would like to see a full implementation of the
upcoming ISO 32000 standard for PDF. Despite the increasing frequency
with which PDF is used for corporate and academic purposes, all
software that provides the highest levels of support for the ISO
standard is proprietary, which means that, without a concerted effort,
free software users could be left behind.
Marchesi also says, "We want a GPLv3 implementation of PDF. Almost
all of the existing alternatives are licensed under GPLv2 only."
Besides the obvious credibility involved in having the new version
of the license used, no doubt an important consideration is the
conviction that a GPLv3 program will provide greater protection
of users' freedoms.
The approach
Marchesi considered adding the missing functionality to existing
free PDF libraries, the project quickly discovered that this idea
was impractical, given GNU PDF's engineering goals.
"Our objective is to provide the same level of PDF support as
Adobe [Acrobat]," Marchesi says, referring to the leading proprietary
PDF program. "So we need a general and complete library that provides
enough functionality to build an Acrobat-like program on top of
it. This requires capabilities to both read and manipulate PDF files
in an integrated library. None of the existing free implementations
provides that [integration]. Some of them are designed to provide
rasterization of PDF pages, such as Ghostscript, Xpdf, and Poppler,
while others are designed to provide facilities for PDF manipulation,
such as PoDoFo." Each is suitable for its particular purposes, but
not for the
integrated
support envisioned by GNU PDF.
GNU PDF's first goal is to write a library in the C programming
language "intended to be used by both PDF consumer and PDF product
applications," Marchesi says. "The library will be similar to the
Adobe PDF Library, providing access to several layers of abstraction.
In this way, the library will be useful for many kinds of applications,
not just viewers."
The next step will be to write an application that has already
been labelled GNU Juggler, "an Acrobat-like application on top of
the library." GNU Juggler, Marchesi says, "will be a specialized
PDF viewer and editor." To help with the application's creation,
a member of GNU PDF project is already performing a functional analysis
of the latest edition of Acrobat Professional, Adobe's flagship
PDF product, in order to reverse-engineer it.
One thing GNU PDF will not have to do is write a graphics library.
Project members have already concluded that they can use
libcairo.
The members of the
Cairo project are aware of GNU PDF, and some have already started
discussing having the GNU PDF library being
integrated with their work.
Realizing the project goals
The FSF has set up a Web page for
donations to GNU PDF -- a first for any of its ongoing high-priority
projects, although the FSF did briefly help collect pledges for
the
Free Ryzom campaign last year. However, Marchesi emphasizes
that "we will go ahead with the project in any case." Donations
would allow the project to hire full-time developers, instead of
the volunteers more usual in a new free software project.
"To write the GNU PDF library and GNU Juggler is a really big
task, and we want to do it really fast," Marchesi says. "It is crucial
for us to have a free, complete, and high-quality implementation
of the PDF standard as soon as possible."
Bruce Byfield is a computer journalist who writes regularly
for Linux.com and IT Manager's Journal.
January 30, 2007 (
WSJ.com
) Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN), a leading
provider of speech and imaging solutions, today announced that its
"Better PDF for Business(TM)" solutions - PDF Create!, PDF Converter,
PDF Converter Professional and PDF Edit Japanese Edition - have
been deployed to more than one million desktops, and are by far
the best-selling PDF alternatives to Adobe(R) Acrobat(R) desktop
software worldwide.
The one million seat milestone is especially significant
given that Nuance first introduced its PDF product family just over
three years ago. PDF Converter, developed in collaboration with
Microsoft, was the first-ever solution to convert PDF files into
fully-formatted Microsoft Office Word documents, complete with text,
columns, tables and graphics. The recently released PDF Converter
Professional 4, now the flagship of Nuance's PDF product family,
has also benefited from Nuance's ongoing collaboration with Microsoft,
especially in the product's support for Windows Vista, the 2007
Microsoft Office system and the XML Paper Standard (XPS), a new
same-as-paper electronic format recently put forward by Microsoft.
"Nuance's expertise in PDF conversion lays the
groundwork for adding value to the 2007 Microsoft Office system,"
said Jacob Jaffe, director of Microsoft Office at Microsoft Corp.
"As our customers expand their use of the 2007 Office system, we
are pleased to see Nuance developing tools to increase productivity
and allowing users of Microsoft Office to bring PDF documents into
Word, Excel and XPS formats."
Organizations both large and small have discovered
the power and benefits within Nuance's PDF applications, including
Airbus, ALDA Pharmaceuticals Corp., Bayer Industry Services, Best,
Best & Krieger, LLP, Credit Suisse Information Technology, Dassault,
The Euro Tunnel, French Ministry of Economy and Finance, EOF Technologies,
French Social Security, The Gillette Company, Lockheed Martin Space
Systems, Mitsubishi Hitec Paper, The National Institute of Health,
Pfizer, Inc., Porsche, Siemens, Telefunken, Trend Micro, Volkswagen,
and Wells Fargo.
AcroTray is a process to kill :-)
Process name: AcroTray
Product: AcroTray - Adobe Acrobat Distiller helper application.
Company: Adobe Systems Inc.
File: acrotray.exe
"acrotray.exe" is an Adobe Acrobat Distiller helper application.
Get more detailed information about acrotray.exe and all other
running background processes with
Security
Task Manager.
Note: Any malware can be
named anything - so you should check where the files of the running
processes are located on your disk. If a "non-Microsoft" .exe file
is located in the C:\Windows or C:\Windows\System32 folder, then
there is a high risk for a virus, spyware, trojan or worm infection!
Check
it out!
Here's a comment by
Kelly,
taken
from a post on a Digg article:
“Apple: We're offering you several technologies that will
make Premiere much better. Please Use them.
Adobe: Microsoft doesn't offer these. We work to give parity to
our software releases so your efforts don't help us.
Apple: Well then would you at least give performance parity with
the Windows version?
Adobe: No real reason to. Windows is the future. Live with what
you got.
Apple: Nearly half of your market is Macintosh users. If you don't
do this you'll be sorry.
Adobe: How could we be sorry? We're the kings of video. Which current
software company can change this?
Apple: We warned you... [introducing Final Cut Pro]
Adobe: Holy crap... we just lost our Mac customers!
Apple: Again... we warned you... many times.
Adobe: Holy crap, we're now starting to lose Windows customers to
Final Cut Pro on Macintosh!!!
Apple: You only have yourselves to blame.
Adobe: OK... we're sorry. Here's the new Premiere you requested.”
[Feb 6, 2007] Opinion of the opposite side: Adobe lovers (via email):
Sometimes Russians easily get really emotional and wrong ;-). Now
i really need a good "I hate acrobat post" to compensate for emotional
damage caused by reading such a letter unless the text below is from
a fake Russian Actually I never suspected that
there are real Russians (outside of those employed by Adobe but in such
cases disclaimer is a must) who are eager to defend one of the absolutely
worst offenders in terms of being bloatware and just generally
God damned annoying software...
Your_name: Alex
Country: Russia
Sorry, but feedback button from that page leads to 404. Second
sorry for the rude and emotional language. Nikolay Bezrukov is a
noob that has a little knowledge about web design, syntax, gramma
and designer's software. Why the hell that moron gives crap about
Photoshop and Acrobat!? I will not bother to comment his nonsense
about Photoshop replacements. That will be a waste of time. Besides
somebody tell Nikolay to learn English. He uses "then" instead of
"than" here and there.
Free
PDF creator,
PDF writer and PDF converter for Windows NT4/2000/XP/Server
2003.
This tool installs itself as a print driver, all you have to do
is to click "Print" from your
application to create
PDF files with full hyperlinks support,up to 2540x2540 dpi printing
resolution, custom paper size, PDF document informationt, font embedding,
printing scaling, PDF compatibility support and more.
Other files can be converted to PDF filles.
PDF4Free is complete freeware
PDF creator. Users may create PDF files as many as they want.
However, the features of the software are limited to PDF creation
with
font embedding, title, subject, author, keyword information
embedding.
The
software is free ONLY for personal and noncommercial use. Anyone
who wishes to use the software for
business and commerce should purchase PDF4U family products.
All
PDF documents created by PDF4Free will be tagged, i.e. PDF Creator
- PDF4Free v2.0 will be tagged onto all the created PDF documents.
The sole purpose of the tag is to spread the free PDF creator software
to more and more people.
A low cost PDF alternative
I stopped using Acrobat too (FWIW, activation was a nightmare
of my computer as well)! I create lots of PDF forms and switched
to Nitro PDF PRO. It basically has the same functionality as acrobat
plus a few extras (like the neat automatic build bookmarks feature).
It loads PDFs significantly faster than Acrobat - I was sold on
this alone... Acrobat chewed up my memory usage.
September 18, 2006 (BetaNews)
Adobe on Monday introduced version 8 of its ubiquitous
Acrobat PDF software as part of a minor update to its Creative Suite.
The new release brings with it Web conferencing functionality incorporated
from Macromedia Breeze.
In recent years, Adobe has endeavored to turn Acrobat
from simple PDF creation software into a complete platform for digital
publishing - even adding support for 3D imaging. Now, the company
is looking to hook businesses with collaboration features.
In examples given by the company, Adobe says engineers can share
product designs up and down the supply chain, while lawyers could
circulate contracts for digital signatures and architects let clients
review and markup blueprints. Built-in security will let users
control what content can be shared and edited.
Large groups can collaborate on the creation of a single
document by accessing it over a standard network share and using
Adobe Reader. Acrobat 8 will also provide export functionality so
content can be reused in other applications, Adobe said.
As part of the update, Adobe also rolled out its Acrobat
Connect product that offers hosted meetings rooms. Connect was formerly
known as Macromedia Breeze and utilizes Flash in a Web browser.
The service will compete with the likes of GoTo Meeting and WebEx,
with a subscription price of $39 per month or $395 per year. A version
for businesses to deploy locally will additionally be offered, Adobe
said.
Adobe Acrobat 8 will ship this November in Professional
and Standard variants priced at $449 and $299 USD, respectively.
Upgrades from previous Acrobat versions will cost $149 and $99 USD.
Version 8 will also ship as part of Adobe Creative Suite 2.3, which
now includes Dreamweaver 8.
The Pdf995 Suite offers
the following features, all at no cost: • Automatic
insertion of embedded links
• Hierarchical Bookmarks
• Support for Digital Signatures
• Support for Triple DES encryption
• Append Delete and Reorder PDF Pages
• Batch Print from Microsoft Office
• Asian and Cyrillic fonts
• Integration with Microsoft Word toolbar
• PDF Stationery
• Combining multiple PDF's into a single PDF
• Burst/Split PDFs
• Sticky Note Annotations
• Three auto-name options to bypass Save As dialog
• Imposition of Draft/Confidential stamps
• Support for large format architectural printing
• Convert PDF to JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PCX formats
• Convert PDF to text
• Convert PDF to HTML and Word DOC conversion
• Automatic Table of Contents generang
• Support for Citrix/Terminal Server
• Support for Windows 2003 Server
• Easy PS to PDF processing
• Specify PDF document properties
• Control PDF opening mode
• Support for shared network printing
• Dynamic Page and 'Bates' stamping
• RGB and CMYK colorspaces
• Page Rotation
• Free: Creates PDFs without annoying watermarks
• Free: Fully functional, not a trial and does not expire
• Over 10 million satisfied customers
• Millions of
Enterprise users worldwide
PDF format is becoming more and more popular among users. However,
the problem of documents indexing of PDF files by search engines
arises at this point. Many simple search engines do not index PDF
documents, but rather just ignore them. We have a simple and convenient
solution. Convert your PDF files to HTML using the PDF to HTML converter
and easily integrate resulting HTML files in your existing web site
structure. Converting PDF documents to HTML makes their contents
more accessible and available for a larger target audience.
Developer Sid Steward describes pdftk as the PDF equivalent of an
"electronic staple remover, hole punch, binder, secret decoder ring,
and X-ray glasses." That's a lot of functionality for a 4MB application,
but the software delivers. Pdftk can join and split PDFs; pull single
pages from a file; encrypt and decrypt PDF files; add, update, and
export a PDF's metadata; export bookmarks to a text file; add or
remove attachments to a PDF; fix a damaged PDF; and fill out PDF
forms. In short, there's very little pdftk can't do when it comes
to working with PDFs.You can
download pdftk 1.12 as source or as a Debian or RPM package,
FreeBSD port, or Gentoo Ebuild. Binaries are available for Windows
and Mac OS X too. If you decide to compile pdftk, as I did, check
the
build notes before you begin, in order to find out about any
dependencies for your Linux distro or your platform. The compilation
process only took a few minutes on my computer, and there were no
hitches.
Pdftk is a command-line tool, and the syntax can be complicated,
especially for complex actions such as removing specific pages from
a PDF file. You can expect to do a lot of typing, but that shouldn't
put you off using the tool.
Although The GIMP
is most popular in Linux circles because it is available under the
same GNU open source license, it quickly gained acceptance in other
operating environments through ports of the XWindows system.
Anyone who follows open source news has undoubtedly heard the
proclamations from this community, suggesting that The Gimp -- among
other open source graphics applications, -- has opened doors to
operating systems such as Linux and BSD, as a means of expansion
into the advertising and design sector.
Despite being a great admirer of Linux and similar Unix operating
systems, I took these proclamations from the open-source community
with a grain of salt, as my experience with Adobe's products has
given me a bias toward the company's incredible implementations
of the graphics applications I use on a daily basis.
GIMP to the Max
After the recent release of
XDarwin, an XWindows port for Mac OS X, and
Mac Gimp, I finally had a means of comparative analysis between
The GIMP and Adobe's PhotoShop on my OS X machine. Only a few months
earlier, my wife had requested that her iBook, with its dual-boot
OS 9 and Linux PPC configuration, be limited to only OS 9 as a means
of conserving space.
Before
installation of the open-source graphics software, I admit my
skepticism levels were extremely high, but after only an hour of
experimentation with the software, I came away extremely impressed.
The GIMP not only employs a nearly identical feature set to PhotoShop's,
navigation is a cinch because both programs' floating palettes are
similar in nature. I was surprised to learn that I could open native
Photoshop files within The GIMP and retain a file's layers as well
as most of its layer filters. Alpha Channels, layer masks, clipping
paths, a slew of filters and almost all the features I've known
in PhotoShop were all available and at my disposal.
On the Other Hand
Along with the good, a handful of things did leave me disappointed.
While I do expect these issues to be addressed in the near future
-- as is the case with all open-source software -- the thing I immediately
noticed was a lack of CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) support.
Until this issue is addressed, it will be the primary barrier to
entry for acceptance in most mainstream graphics departments.
The second most notable necessity is a common clipboard between
a user's primary interface (in my case OS X) and that of XWindows/XDarwin.
It would have been wonderful if I could copy and paste files between
OS X and XWindows applications. The only way I found to transfer
files between the two is by saving the document to a file and re-opening
it in the alternative graphics application. A common clipboard would
be a great time saver.
Friendly Scripting
And last, although far less concerning than the other two, there
is a need for a more user-friendly scripting system. Most graphics
professionals haven't yet learned Perl or Python and have come to
greatly appreciate PhotoShop's action script record feature.
The GIMP's Script-Fu and Perl-Fu are indeed powerful -- even
more so than PhotoShop's implementation -- but as they are essentially
a full scripting language, the power is all but entirely removed
from most graphics professionals, who might be better suited to
take advantage of easy-to-use scripting capabilities.
Almost There
While The GIMP may not yet be ready for the high demands of most
advertising agencies, service bureaus or graphics production houses,
due to its few high-end limitations, it's an ideal piece of software
for the home user on a budget or a demanding art department with
necessities involving Web or other monitor-only environments. And
because open-source software is updated so frequently, we may see
the issues I've addressed resolved in the coming months.
Adobe Illustrator is widely accepted as the industry standard, but
CorelDraw offers more flexibility. Drawing tools are easy to use and
provide great control over the shape and placement of objects. A new
hierarchical Object Manager conveniently organizes layers, objects,
and master layers, while the Page Sorter offers drag-and-drop management
of multiple-page documents. I've got to disagree that Photoshop is easy
to use on a day-to-day basis. Let me give two examples of common operations.
1. Clone out dust spots. You need to select rubber-stamp distance
with ALT-click first. Micrografx PicturePublisher already has a default
distance set, making dust clone-out much quicker.
2. Blur blue sky grain. This is best done by magic wand selection,
then Expand 1-2 pixels, then Contract 2-3 pixels, then blur, then Contract
1, then blur, then repeated iteration. Oy this is painful, with Expand
and Contract hidden several menu levels down.
Some folks on Usenet, for example Michael Greer, have tried both
Photoshop and PhotoPaint, and decided to use Corel. If a person is not
a Macintosh lover, the Corel interface may seem more familiar. Personally
I have not tried PhotoPaint, but for digital photography (not offset
printing) I prefer PicturePublisher to Photoshop. Of course Photoshop
is the obvious choice for publishing.
Jam-packed with the most graphics
tools and features in a single product, CorelDraw 10 Graphics
Suite doesn't sacrifice quality for quantity. This product includes
a proficient image editor (Corel Photo-Paint 10), an excellent illustration
program (CorelDraw 10), animation software (Corel R.A.V.E.), a variety
of useful utilities, and a vast library of clip art.
The three main programs -- sporting
similar tools and options -- are full-featured and well integrated
with one another. And among the products in this round up, they
are also the easiest applications to use. All controls, colors,
and options are at your fingertips. Floating palettes may be docked
as tabs, and tool options are displayed in the property bar at the
top of the screen.
... ... ...
Creating the exact look you want
is quick and simple, thanks to drag-and-drop tools for applying
properties such as transparency, drop shadows, and blends. All of
these properties can also be created in numerical dialogs.
CorelDraw's text tools are top-notch,
providing desktop-publishing controls for laying out and formatting
text. Text and paths remain editable on-screen, and the Print Merge
wizard helps you place fields for merging your document with a database.
... ... ...
The suite includes a variety of Web
tools, though it isn't on the same level as Macromedia Fireworks
4. There are tools for creating rollover buttons and image maps.
When optimizing images for the Web, there are side-by-side previews
for comparison. But the tools are limited. For example, you cannot
copy and paste JavaScript or HTML code through the Windows Clipboard.
We were impressed with the new color
management interface, which is logical and accurate. When we printed
the document, the colors perfectly matched those on our monitor.
The print dialog is very advanced and includes tabs for Prepress,
Postscript, Separations, and Preflight. Save for Service Bureau
gathers all related files and can apply profiles provided by a service
bureau.
... ... ...
Unlike Photoshop, which is unabashedly
bitmap-oriented, Fireworks seamlessly integrates vector and raster
graphics. By default, the program opens in vector mode, but selecting
certain tools automatically flips you into bitmap mode (you can
also switch explicitly by selecting the bitmap itself). The basic
workflow consists of creating objects using the geometric shapes,
text, or path tools, applying effects such as bevels or glows, organizing
the objects with the Layers panel, adding the glitz -- rollovers,
animations, and hotspots -- and then exporting the objects for use
in a Web-site-creation program such as Dreamweaver.
Effects in Fireworks are live, which
means that they may be toggled on and off, reordered and edited
on the fly via the Effects panel. Such effects range from basic
color adjustment (brightness, contrast, levels, hue, saturation)
to fancy bevels, embossing, glows and motion trails. Fireworks can
also use Photoshop plug-ins and save custom effects as styles. The
latter is a nice touch -- too bad it's so difficult to edit saved
styles.
Fireworks 4 introduces drag and drop
to create rollovers, but we frankly found the implementation a bit
strange. Those not up to speed on slices will unfortunately discover
that Fireworks relies on slices for many activities, including rollover
and pop-up menu creation. In Fireworks, you assign interactivity
to slices, rather than objects. For example, to create a rollover
by drag-and-drop, you drag the slice's behavior handle to another
image in a separate frame. We think using the Behaviors panel to
create rollovers is simpler, but each to his or her own.
We were duly impressed with the neat
Pop-up Menu feature for quickly creating lists of links that appear
when a mouse moves over the area. Somewhat Wizard-like in implementation,
the two dialog boxes let you enter text and URLs and then set the
color of the text and background cells. Once you've finished, the
cells can be repositioned by dragging on the slice's central handle.
Like rollovers, you have to insert a slice before you can create
the menu object.
We liked the live-animation feature,
which makes it dead simple to generate prancing logos and bouncing
buttons via a single menu command. Fireworks automatically creates
the number of requested animation frames and adjusts the movement,
rotation, direction, opacity and scaling as you specify in the Animate
dialog box. Each frame holds a "snapshot" of the object at a point
along the animation path, and you can change any attribute of the
object by selecting the appropriate frame and making adjustments.
The direction of the path itself may also be modified, but nonlinear
movement or other complex animation sequences are not supported.
Another area where Fireworks excels
is global find and replace. With this panel, you can locate and
change colors (including non-Web 216 colors), text and URLs anywhere
in your document. This handy feature is not the only labor-saving
device in version 4 -- Macromedia also has added powerful batch
processing. With this feature, files may be converted to another
format with different optimization settings; scaled, renamed and
even globally searched for replacing fonts, colors and URLs. We
especially liked the fact that files can be batched from different
folders, a feature that Photoshop lacks. And, like Photoshop, Fireworks
sports a History panel that records all the steps taken during a
session and provides the means to save a list to a file for use
at another time.
Fireworks's output options are not
for the faint of heart. You can specify every conceivable parameter:
extensions, HTML and spacer style, empty cell color and contents,
slice naming convention, not to mention the various optimization
settings for GIF, PNG and JPEG file formats. Like Photoshop, the
program offers a selective JPEG compression that compacts only selected
portions of your image, creating a nice compromise between image
quality and file size. In addition, files may be saved in a variety
of other formats -- Macromedia Director, Photoshop, Lotus Domino
Designer, Wireless Bitmap and CSS (cascading style sheets). Fortunately,
Fireworks includes an export Wizard that automatically selects the
best format for the document based on the end use (Web, print and
so on) and lets you preview and edit the results.
Version 4 is indisputably elegant,
but more importantly, it's the most powerful Web-graphic-creation
program we've ever used. Professional Web developers should definitely
consider Fireworks as a first-line application. But even casual
users will find this program makes it easy to produce top-quality
Internet imagery.
The verdict: Is Adobe
a software thug?
July 27, 2001 12:00 AM
ET
by UpsideToday Staff
The defendant
Adobe Systems (ADBE)
The charges
Adopting a brutal, thuggish stance toward computer programmers
Trammeling free speech
Judge's commentary
This trial was, as they say, over before it started. Just as
the prosecution said they would, hackers picketed the defendant's
headquarters Monday. Before that day was over, Adobe had joined
the Electronic Frontier Foundation in calling for the release of
Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian programmer whose hacking sparked this
case. (See
Adobe, EFF call for release of Russian programmer.)
"The prosecution of this individual in this particular case is
not conducive to the best interests of any of the parties involved
or the industry," Adobe General Counsel Colleen Pouliot said in
a press release.
Still, Adobe reiterated its support for the additions made to
copyright law in 1998 and said it was glad Sklyarov's company was
no longer selling its e-book circumvention program in the U.S.
Members of our jury overwhelmingly felt that Adobe acted thuggishly
and ran roughshod over free speech, finding the company guilty by
a margin wider than 80 percent on both counts. Jurors were passionate
in their indictment of the company, calling its actions antithetical
to basic liberal ideals and human rights, commercially stupid and
generally un-American. They threatened to unload their Adobe stock,
stop buying the company's products and urge others to follow their
example.
They also objected vociferously to the idea that Sklyarov's computer
cracking was a crime and that his prosecution was a move to protect
vital intellectual property rights.
"Last I heard, free speech gives the right to sell ingredients
for explosives, to describe techniques on manufacturing drugs or
bombs, and folks have the right to blow up their own safe
if they want," wrote Juror Tunesmith. "It's actually selling the
drugs, robbing the bank, selling the stolen goods that is illegal
- and Elcomsoft [Sklyarov's company] doesn't sell pirated ebooks."
Juror Jim Hillhouse agreed.
"If I have a security system on my house or a new lock installed
on my front door, naturally I do not want individuals randomly entering
my premises by thwarting my installed security systems," he wrote,
addressing a comparison made in Adobe's defense between code cracking
and burglary. "However, if an individual has information that brings
to light the weaknesses of my new security system or door lock,
I certainly want that person to be free to pursue research and to
discuss the findings of such research in the discovery of those
weaknesses." (Read the juror's
full statement.)
Indeed, many jurors said that hacking in the quest for technical
excellence, rather than for the purpose of illegally obtaining a
particular piece of information, like an e-book, should not be a
crime in the first place.
"Intent is the key," wrote Juror David N. Cicalo. "Was the intent
of the hacker [to prove] that a given encryption is faulty and breakable
or was his intent to cause harm or destruction? Clearly, Sklyarov
wanted to demonstrate the weakness in Adobe's encryption and not
promote the hacking of Adobe software. The law must always take
intent into consideration in it's application thereof." (Read the
juror's
full statement.
Juror Guilty put things more bluntly: "Adobe is not protecting
its own copyright," the juror wrote. "It is protecting its own inability
to protect the copyright of people who use its products. The emperor
wears no clothes." (Read the juror's
full statement.)
Juror Chris Tembreull agreed with the prosecution that Adobe
is more likely to be able to improve its software if it works with
responsible hackers rather than have them arrested. "The [r]ight'
to sue anyone who cracks a company's halfhearted, shoddy security
and/or software removes any impetus that company might have to improve
upon that security or software. It's security-via-punishment, which
will not work." (Read the juror's
full statement.)
For all the outcry against Adobe, there was a vocal minority
of jurors who saw the arrest of Sklyarov as an important bulwark
against anarchy and piracy. Just because a security measure can
be broken doesn't mean it should be they said, echoing the defense.
Besides, the law is the law -- it cannot be broken just because
someone disagrees with it.
"This is not about e-books," wrote Juror Anon. "This is about
national security (no joke). Any piece of software can be hacked,
it happens all the time, people just need to be motivated enough.
Go back to World War II. How long did top code crackers spend decoding
German codes? Months! This is exactly the same. Any code can be
cracked and it's up to governments to control and prosecute to keep
them under wraps." (Read the juror's
full statement.)
Juror Peter said it is not national security that's at stake
so much as individual liberty. In the end, he said, the freedom
to make a living through creative expression is at stake in this
case. "Adobe is defending its own copyright, [while] the government
is defending the free speech and copyright of thousands of journalists
and authors," the juror wrote. (Read the juror's
full statement.)
Finally, Andrei Volgin wrote in to say that Sklyarov's software
is not, in fact, legal in his mother country. "Breaking software
code and violating software publishers' copyright is illegal in
Russia. Russian Criminal Code provides for up to 5 years in prison
for this kind of crime." (Read the juror's
full statement.)
The verdict
Despite a few objections, our jurors spoke with a resounding
voice. The defendant is found guilty on both counts and sentenced
to a future of mediocrity in the e-publishing business. Court adjourned.
Disclaimer: This article represents an entirely fictitious
court case. It is meant as a forum to promote discussion of various
issues in the technology industry and has no real-life legal implications.
If you would like to submit a letter to the editor regarding
this story, email
online@upside.com.
I've been using Foxit Reader for some time on my aging laptop because of performance issues with Adobe Reader 9, and it works great. http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/ [foxitsoftware.com]
Foxit has a couple of problems with some forms-based PDFs my work gave me, but on the other hand, it lets me save form field values in pdfs where acrobat won't.
It's great; I got sick of the bloat ware and "run all the time! in the background! always show up with checks for prompts for updates every time I open my browser!" that adobe has turned into.
now if foxit only made a flash player
Re:Not Much Cross-Platform (Score:4, Interesting)
by John Whitley (6067) on Wednesday April 22, @07:15PM (#27680805) HomepageYes. There's also Skim [sourceforge.net] for OS X, which is far and away my favorite PDF reader for any platform. It's actually designed by and for people who really want to read, quickly search, and annotate PDFs.
Here are two of Skim's great features that I'd love to to see in other PDF readers:
I do believe that Skim relies heavily on various OS X frameworks (e.g. for PDF rendering, Spotlight support for search, etc.). That definitely goes to show the value of providing functionality via general, well-conceived and well-implemented frameworks instead of being wrapped up inside of monolithic applications.
Bazaar [bazaar-vcs.org] -- source control that rocks.