Peter's Blog

I hate pdf files. Or maybe just Acrobat Reader.

Reason 1: acrobat reader has made firefox lock up for me for a while, such that I have disabled the .pdf plugin so that pdf's simply get downloaded. This morning I am playing with my new MSN Search toolbar install (or whatever the name is this week) and it locks up trying to show me a pdf file. (Sidetrack: I indexed some of the company file server: could be interesting).

Reason 2: why can't I set a default resolution that is reasonable? Each and every new document opens in some random way the 'author' left the settings at and I have to fiddle around trying make it readable. Do I have this trouble with html pages? No. Web Browsers are designed to display pages in the most readable way, Acrobat Reader is designed to make the pages appear how the 'author' intended them.

Reason 3: someone sent me a requirement spec containing an extract from a comms protocol I had to implement. I try to copy the extract and paste it straight into my test harness and what do I get? Garbage. It seems that pfd files can use weird fonts and character encodings internally and it makes no attempt to fix itself if you copy and paste. I tried using various ubuntu tools to get the text and same problem, it's the pdf format that is broken here. There are three solutions:

1. get the 'author' to use standard fonts. Some hope.
2. print it and read it back using OCR.
3. retype it yourself. Be sure to charge time taken to client.

Welcome to the age of electronic documentation.

Reason 4: Acrobat reader 7 is out but I don't want to install it because of Adobes policy of accepting $$$ from anyone in return for dumping their stuff on my computer. Yahoo toolbar? I can download it myself. PrintMe? Bite me.

Reason 5: What usability expert decided that clicking on a page should change the resolution? Just when you have it set right?

Conclusion: I hate pdf files. And Acrobat Reader.

Update: Foxit Reader free, small fast pdf viewer.

Last week the second hard disk in my work pc died in the hot weather so I disconnected it. It only held backup stuff and now I backup to my work ubuntu server. Life went on except when I booted firefox all my bookmarks had gone. No idea why this could be, maybe my cache was on the second hard disk so it decided to reset everything. The extensions were still there.

Today I fell into an old Firefox annoyance, click on a pdf file and firefox locks up. The Adobe Acrobat plugin has never been reliable for me. It's bad enough having to use acrobat reader and mess around finding a comfortable text size, it's worse having to kill firefox and reboot.

My normal solution to this is disable the plugin. This is done through Tools/Options/Downloads/Plugins and uncheck the pdf line. Clicking on a pdf then gives you the normal open/save downloading options and you can open it in conventional acrobat reader.

Fed up with waiting for Adobe Acrobat Reader 6 to start? Try renaming the following directory:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader\plug_ins

If you change it's name to, say:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader\hide plug_ins

then Acrobat Reader boots much quicker and doesn't load a lot of bloaty dll's that it doesn't seem to do need. This works with all the .pdf files I have tried.

If you have any problems then change the name of the directory back.

Was moved to 'upgrade' to latest acrobat reader in the desperate hope it would allow me to copy text. Waited too long for download and for something called the FEAD optimizer to decompress it and the sodding thing refused to install because I didn't have the latest service pack.

I've never liked acrobat reader, awful user interface, huge files, nasty rigid inflexible etext thing more tailored to restricting you. I will never understand why it is so popular.

I'm not going to waste my time and risk the stability of my pc installing a service pack just for this.

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