On Sun 10 Feb 2008 17:31:21 NZDT +1300, Bryen wrote:
I admit that I favor acroread as well. However, I would be hesitant to term it as a must. There are several other pdf file readers available that are all open-source, such as Evince, KPDF, Kghostview, etc.
There are only 2: ghostscript, and xpdf. All others are based on either of these 2, meaning they have a different GUI on top of the same pdf parser.
Contrary to what most people assume, pdf is not a standard/file format owned by Adobe. They just did a very good job of making it appear as such. If you're a purist, there are alternative options.
You misunderstand. True, PDF is an open format. But acroread is the de-facto reference implementation. If it works in acroread then that is all you're gonna get, never mind whether it's a "proper" PDF or not. And there are heaps of PDFs which just crash in ghostscript, esp with the years-old ghostscript version used by CUPS and shipped by all Linux vendors (yes, no new ghostscript since SUSE 9.3). And there are enough PDFs which don't work well, and some not at all, in xpdf. They all work in acroread. Acroread is a last resort, but a must-have last resort. Even if it drives me nuts when I have to use it. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org