This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
From: Romain Kang <romain@kzsu.stanford.edu> Subject: [svlug] Anyone know a good "How to read PDF" page? Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 14:24:44 -0700 (PDT) To: svlug@lists.svlug.org One of the guys on the website team is in the habit of putting in the words "You must have Adobe Acrobat installed to view this file" whereever there's a PDF link. Of course this is untrue, but it's also not reasonable to put the details right on the same page. Before I attempt to write inclusive, vendor-neutral instructions how to read PDFs in a manner that grandparents could follow, does anyone know of a URL that has already done this? === From: Anthony Ettinger <apwebdesign@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [svlug] Anyone know a good "How to read PDF" page? Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 17:10:51 -0700 (PDT) To: Romain Kang <romain@kzsu.stanford.edu>, svlug@lists.svlug.org Romain Kang <romain@kzsu.stanford.edu> wrote: > One of the guys on the website team is in the habit of > putting in the words "You must have Adobe Acrobat > installed to view this file" whereever there's a PDF link. > Of course this is untrue, but it's also not reasonable to > put the details right on the same page. > > Before I attempt to write inclusive, vendor-neutral > instructions how to read PDFs in a manner that > grandparents could follow, does anyone know of a URL that > has already done this? http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/help2.html It's no different than opening a .doc file. You just need to make sure the visitor has the right program. Either adobe pdf or xpdf. ===== From: Romain Kang <romain@kzsu.stanford.edu> Subject: Re: [svlug] Anyone know a good "How to read PDF" page? Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 21:49:56 -0700 To: svlug@lists.svlug.org Anthony Ettinger wrote: > http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/help2.html Thanks, that's a good starting point. On Mac OS X, of course, the PDF-capable Preview app comes bundled. So I see a matrix that looks something like this: Adobe xpdf Bundled FreeBSD x86 * Y Acroread under Linux x86 compat Linux generic Y * xpdf sometimes part of distro Linux x86 Y Y * xpdf sometimes part of distro MS Windows PPC Y MS Windows desktop Y Mac OS X Y Preview.app PalmOS Y Symbian Y === From: Anthony Ettinger <apwebdesign@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [svlug] Anyone know a good "How to read PDF" page? Cc: Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 23:34:31 -0700 (PDT) To: Romain Kang <romain@kzsu.stanford.edu>, svlug@lists.svlug.org Romain Kang <romain@kzsu.stanford.edu> wrote: > Anthony Ettinger wrote: > > http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/help2.html > Thanks, that's a good starting point. On Mac OS X, of course, > the PDF-capable Preview app comes bundled. So I see a matrix > that looks something like this: > Adobe xpdf Bundled > FreeBSD x86 * Y Acroread under Linux x86 compat > Linux generic Y * xpdf sometimes part of distro > Linux x86 Y Y * xpdf sometimes part of distro > MS Windows PPC Y > MS Windows desktop Y > Mac OS X Y Preview.app > PalmOS Y > Symbian Y There is a precompiled binary of xpdf for dos/win32 http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html although adobe is sure to be better. === From: Bill Kendrick <nbs@sonic.net> Subject: Re: [svlug] Anyone know a good "How to read PDF" page? Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 23:57:40 -0700 To: svlug@lists.svlug.org Romain Kang wrote: > Adobe xpdf Bundled > FreeBSD x86 * Y Acroread under Linux x86 compat > Linux generic Y * xpdf sometimes part of distro > Linux x86 Y Y * xpdf sometimes part of distro > MS Windows PPC Y > MS Windows desktop Y > Mac OS X Y Preview.app > PalmOS Y > Symbian Y Heh, may as well point out that apparently Opera on the Zaurus can do PDF. I haven't tested with Opera 7.3. There's also QPDF, which can be found via http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/ Now, if only I had a real reason for PDF-on-the-go... *shrug* Maybe I should look into electronic books, or somethin'? === From: Sanatan Rai <sanat@stanford.edu> Subject: Re: [svlug] Anyone know a good "How to read PDF" page? Cc: svlug@lists.svlug.org Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 10:04:04 -0700 (PDT) : Now, if only I had a real reason for PDF-on-the-go... *shrug* : Maybe I should look into electronic books, or somethin'? The only real reason that I can think of, is of course portability. It is not as portable as plain text, but for mathematical documents, one can't beat PDFLaTeX. (Yes, it beats LaTeX + dvips, try embedding a complicated mpost figure in the document.) On the other hand, you might want to stay away from e-Books. I had, what I regarded as a bad experience, though it might well be normal for someone used to e-Books. I bought this e-Book. I downloaded it onto my laptop running Win2000. I later realised that I couldn't open that document on any other machine, such as for instance, when I booted the laptop with Linux. Eventually, when the Win partition crashed, I lost the book. I did print the book out before hand, so all was not lost. Printing the book out defeated the purpose of buying an e-Book. (Actually, I had ordered the e-Book rather than the print edition because I didn't want to wait for it to be delivered.) Needless to stay, I am going to stay away from e-Books. I wonder very much if this kind of behaviour isn't in contravention of basic consumer rights. My halfpenny bit. ===