Re: Warning about Adobe 8

[selinger@mathstat.dal.ca (Peter Selinger)]

Hi Mike,

in fairness, while Acrobat is commercial software, PDF is not really a
proprietary format. The format has been fully and publicly documented
since its inception in 1993.

The PDF reference manual, like that of PostScript before it, is
available from Adobe's website. As far as such technical references
are concerned, it is also extremely accessible and well-written.
I read the PostScript specification cover to cover, and I found it
better than the reference manuals of most other programming languages.

Adobe has extended the PDF specification from time to time (they are
now at version 1.7). However, they have made an effort to remain
backward compatible, and the changes in each version have been clearly
and transparently documented. That is more than can be said of most
commercial formats.  According to their website, they intend to make
version 1.7 into an ISO standard.

Adobe should also be commended for keeping the PDF specification
separate from the Acrobat implementation thereof. The specification is
actually written in such a way that it allows arbitrary people to
write applications that output PDF code, without having to use
Distiller as a conduit.

Regarding the reported problems with ligatures - if someone on that
texhax list could produce a minimal actual example of a PDF file that
displays incorrectly, it should be a relatively simple matter to match
that against the PDF specification to determine whether the bug is in
Acrobat or in the software that produced the file.

Reference: PDF Reference, Sixth Edition, version 1.7
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html

(Note: don't download the link called "PDF Reference and Related
Documentation", because it requires - somewhat circularly - to be
viewed with Acrobat Reader 8).

-- Peter

Michael Barr wrote:
>
> I have to admit that I never tested it, just copied the complaint from
> texhax, usually reliable.  I just tried it on a file created by dvipdfm (I
> rarely use pdftex or pdflatex) and it seems fine.  I have version 8.1.1.
> So perhaps it was an early bug, now corrected.
>
> But my main point--that we cannot tie our future to commercial software
> that the proprietor can change at will--remains valid.
>
> Michael
>
> On Sun, 28 Oct 2007, Robert L Knighten wrote:
>
> > Michael Barr writes:
> >  > 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.  At TAC, we still consider the dvi
> >  > to be the official format.
> >  >
> >  > Michael
> >  >
> >
> > What is the context?  I've been using Adobe Reader 8 on Windows since it first
> > came out and have never seen this, very definitely including pdf files created
> > by pdflatex on both Windows and Linux.  As a quick check I just created a
> > number of pdf files in various ways on both Windows and Linux and viewed them
> > in both places using both Adobe Reader 7 and Adobe Reader 8 and was unable to
> > see any difference at all.
> >
> > -- Bob
> >
> >
>
>
>