From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/4039 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Robert J. MacG. Dawson" Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Warning about Adobe 8 Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:20:36 -0400 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1241019682 11439 80.91.229.2 (29 Apr 2009 15:41:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:41:22 +0000 (UTC) To: Categories list Original-X-From: rrosebru@mta.ca Mon Oct 29 19:46:59 2007 -0300 Return-path: Envelope-to: categories-list@mta.ca Delivery-date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:46:59 -0300 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1ImdK3-000535-AY for categories-list@mta.ca; Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:43:03 -0300 Original-Sender: cat-dist@mta.ca Precedence: bulk X-Keywords: X-UID: 97 Original-Lines: 40 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:4039 Archived-At: Michael Barr wrote: > Whatever you do, do not upgrade to Adobe reader 8. I found this on the > texhax list. > > >>>Has anyone else been clobbered by the discovery that Adobe Acrobat 8 >>>tacitly suppresses all ligature glyphs of the fi, fl, ff, ffi, and ffl >>>sort and displays blanks in their place. They do this without warning, >>>so that a file which displays perfectly well in Acrobat 7 is made >>>unreadable in Acrobat 8. >>> > > > It turns out that files converted (from the ps file) by the distiller > (which costs something like $500) do not have this problem. I guess Adobe > is tired of free use of their format. Well, I suppose that whether or not this is an accidental bug (and remember, as a famous corollary of Occam's Razor tells us, we should never put down to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity) it will be a short enough time before somebody finds out how Distiller codes these glyphs and publicises it; and one upgrade after that before everybody's DVI->PDF utility follows suit. This does not strike me as a game that Adobe could play for long witout wrecking compatibility with their *own* software. Alternatively, one could presumably remap the glyphs so that Acrobat 8 didn't realize what it was displaying. > At TAC, we still consider the dvi to be the official format. Fair enough, though dvi has its own "intellectual property" problems with glyphs that the end user doesn't have a copy of. Not such a problem with TAC, I admit, but... -Robert