ReadMe Information for Adobe (R) Acrobat(R) Reader v. 3.01 for UNIX(R) ============================================================================== Updated: 8 June,1997 This document describes known issues with Acrobat Reader v. 3.01 for UNIX software. For full instructions on using the Acrobat Reader please see the Acrobat Reader 3.0 Online Guide, which can be found in the file READER.PDF in the Help folder (which is within the same folder as the Acrobat Reader). When using Acrobat Reader, selecting the Help > Reader Online Guide menu will open READER.PDF automatically. Acrobat Reader 3.0 for UNIX is available on the following platforms: Sparc(R) SunOS 4.1.3, 4.1.4 Sparc Sun(TM) Solaris(R) 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 HP-UX(TM) 9.03 and above AIX 4.1 and above IRIX 5.3, 6.2 Linux (built and tested on Linux 2.0.0 kernel) Digital Unix 4.0 The document is organized in the following sections: New Information for Acrobat Reader v. 3.01 Acrobat Reader v. 3.01 - Viewing PDF within Web Browsers Acrobat Reader v. 3.01 - Other Known Issues General Information (applies to all platforms) Linux-specific Information Digital Unix-specific Information Adobe Acrobat Reader - Platforms, Availability, and Redistribution Technical Support Information for Acrobat Reader v. 3.0 and v. 3.01 New Features of Acrobat Reader 3.0 Known Issues for Acrobat Reader Working with Netscape Known Issues with Acrobat Reader 3.0 General Information (applies to all platforms) SunOS-specific Information Solaris-specific Information HP-UX-specific Information AIX-specific Information IRIX-specific Information New Information for Acrobat Reader v. 3.01 ------------------------------------------ Acrobat Reader v. 3.01 - Viewing PDF within Web Browsers -------------------------------------------------------- The following tools have been added to the Acrobat Toolbar displayed when viewing PDF files inside the Netscape Navigator window: - A "copy" tool, which appears to the left of the "hand" tool; its icon shows two pages (a page and its copy) - A "select text" tool, which appears to the right of the "zoom out" (magnifying glass minus) tool; its icon shows the letters "abc" in a selection box - A "find" tool, which appears to the right of the "fit width" tool; its icon is a pair of binoculars - A "find again" tool, which appears to the right of the "find" tool; its icon is a small pair of binoculars under a curved arrow When viewing PDF documents within a browser window... To copy text (for pasting elsewhere): - click on the "select text" tool - select the desired text - click on the "copy" tool - when you are done selecting text, click on the "hand" button to return to browsing To find a text string - click on the "find" tool - enter the desired text in the Find dialog - click on the Find dialog's "Find" button or - click on the "find again" tool to find another occurrence of the text Note: Finding text may take a while if pages in the PDF file must be retrieved from the Web server. During the find operation the Find dialog's "Cancel" button will not function. The find operation can be stopped using the escape key. Select, Copy, Find, and Find Again must be done using the tools on the Acrobat toolbar. The "Copy", "Select All", and "Find..." menu items on your browser's "Edit" menu will not invoke the corresponding command on PDF documents. Acrobat Reader v. 3.01 - Other Known Issues ------------------------------------------- General Information ------------------- 1. Blank Pages in Web Browsers - Some pages of PDF files may appear blank when viewed within Web browsers. This may occur if the PDF file is being served from an early versions of some Web servers (such as the Microsoft Internet Information Server version 2.0). Users can view such PDF files by saving a copy locally. Webmasters may need to update their server to the latest version (for more information see http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/byteserve.html). 2. Documentation Errata - On page 7 of the Acrobat Reader 3.0 Online Guide (READER.PDF) in the "Opening PDF documents" section it says "The document author can set PDF documents to be opened in full- screen mode, without a toolbar, menu bar, or window controls. ...To override all the authorŐs document-opening settings, press Control+ Shift (Windows and UNIX) or Option+ Shift (Macintosh) when opening the file." This capability to override all the authorŐs document-opening settings is available in Acrobat Exchange but is NOT available in Acrobat Reader. 3. Launching external applications / Security - PDF files may contain instructions to launch an external application or to open a non-PDF file. To enhance the security of PDF files , in Acrobat Reader and Exchange version 3.01 will prompt users with an alert before launching an external application, an executable file or a command. The alert will say: "Acrobat is about to launch this application: " [Application] "Allow this action (yes) or all actions to all applications (all)?" followed by three buttons, "Yes", "No", and "All". - Choosing "Yes" will allow only this instance of this action. - Choosing "No" will prevent this instance of this action. - Choosing "All" will allow all instances of all actions, thus disabling the alert until Acrobat is exited and restarted. Linux-specific Information -------------------------- 1. System Requirements: Intel 80x86 based computer running Linux 1.2.13 or later kernel. 32 megabytes of RAM 12 megabytes of hard disk space. 2. The Acrobat Reader for Linux was built on a 2.0.0 kernel. 3. The Acrobat Reader for Linux can be used as a plug-in with Netscape 3.0 to display Adobe PDF files inside the Netscape window. 4. Acrobat Reader with Search is not available for Linux. Digital Unix-specific Information --------------------------------- 1. System Requirements: Digital 21x64 based computer running Digital Unix 4.0 or later. 32 megabytes of RAM 16 megabytes of hard disk space. 2. The Acrobat Reader for Digital Unix can be used as a plug-in with Netscape 3.0 to display Adobe PDF files inside the Netscape window. 3. Acrobat Reader with Search is not available for Digital Unix. Adobe Acrobat Reader - Platforms, Availability, and Redistribution ------------------------------------------------------------------ Versions of the Acrobat Reader and Acrobat Reader with Search are available for 16-bit Windows (Windows 3.1), 32-bit Windows (Windows 95, NT 3.51, and NT 4.0), Macintosh, Sun Solaris, SunOS, HP-UX, IBM AIX, and SGI IRIX. In addition, versions of the Acrobat Reader are now also available for Linux, Digital Unix, and OS/2. Installers for all of these versions are available from Adobe's Web Site at http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html. They are also included on the Acrobat Reader CD-ROM which can be purchased inexpensively in quantities of 1, 10,or 100; for ordering information see http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/cdrom.html. For information on redistributing the Acrobat Reader installers see http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/distribute.html. Technical Support ----------------- The following technical support options are available for Adobe Acrobat Reader: A. Visit the Adobe World Wide Web site at http://www.adobe.com/. The Adobe Customer Support Databases can be searched at http://www.adobe.com/supportservice/custsupport/database.html . B. E-mail techdocs@adobe.com to obtain an index of technical solutions available via e-mail. Enter "250099" as the subject of your e-mail to obtain the index of Acrobat documents. C. Call Adobe's FaxYI faxback system at 206-628-5737 (in North America) or +44 131 458 3022 (in Europe) and request document number 250099 for an index of technical solutions available via fax. D. Visit Adobe's online forums on America Online (keyword ADOBE) or CompuServe (GO ADOBESYS). Online volunteers and forum managers offer assistance on Adobe products when issues are posted on the message boards. E. If you reside in the United States or Canada, contact Adobe Acrobat Technical Support between 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. You can either call the (206) number and purchase an Adobe Service Credit for $25, or call Adobe's Pay-For-Support (900) number. When you call the 900 number, after the first three minutes, $2.00 per minute will be charged to your phone bill. Acrobat Technical Support for UNIX 206-628-3950 (or) 900-555-4400 Acrobat Technical Support for Macintosh 206-628-2745 (or) 900-555-3300 Acrobat Technical Support for Windows 206-628-2746 (or) 900-555-2200 Acrobat Technical Support for OS/2 206-628-2746 (or) 900-555-2200 Information for Acrobat Reader v. 3.0 and v. 3.01 ------------------------------------------------- New Features of Acrobat Reader 3.0 ---------------------------------- Acrobat Reader 3.0 for SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, and IRIX can be used as a plug-in with Netscape 3.0 to display Adobe PDF files inside the Netscape window. This provides for seemless viewing of PDF and HTML files while surfing the Web. This also includes page-on-demand downloading and progressive rendering of page contents of optimized PDF files, making PDF files fast and easy to view. Also in this release is a new print dialog, allowing greater flexibility. Known Issues for Acrobat Reader Working with Netscape ----------------------------------------------------- If you encounter problems where PDF documents do not render in Netscape, Netscape hangs, or document transmission stalls, you may disable PDF rendering in the Netscape window and use the viewer as a "Helper Application". To disable PDF rendering in the Netscape window: 1. Pull down the "Options" menu item and select "General Preferences". On the "General Options" dialog, select the "Helpers" tab item. Find the item in the list of helper applications that looks like the following: application/pdf Plug In : nppdf.so 2. Select this item. 3. Select the "Edit ..." button to modify this entry. In the dialog box, select the item marked "Application" and enter the pathname to the Acrobat Reader product along with the "%s" field identifier for the temporary file name. For example, if Acrobat Reader is installed in /usr/local/Acrobat3 then enter the following in the text box for the application: /usr/local/Acrobat3/bin/acroread %s 4. Select the "OK" button in the "Netscape Helper" dialog box. 5. Select the "OK" button in the "Netscape: General Preferences" dialog box. The view in Netscape window feature has been disabled and Acrobat will act as a Netscape helper application. Known Issues with Acrobat Reader 3.0 ------------------------------------ General Information ------------------- 1. Using NCD PC-Xware: A pink tint will appear when Smooth Fonts is turned on in General Preferences and the default visual is TrueColor 5-6-5 (RGB) in 16-bit mode (this is a PC-Xware problem). This affects only the display, not the print result. SOLUTION: Change to a different visual (8-bit or 24-bit) or turn off the Smooth Fonts option. 2. Acrobat Reader will not run correctly from a directory where the "pwd" command fails. 3. We recommend you remove the file $HOME/.acrorc before running Acrobat 3.0 for the first time. This ensures the default preference settings are used when you first run Acrobat 3.0. 4. Files listed in the File menu are "recent files" and depend upon exact path names. If you open a file in a session using and automounter and the automounter goes down, attempting to open the "recent file" will give a "No such file or directory" error. This also occurs when the file is moved, renamed, or Reader is run from a different machine that does not have the same file systems mounted. 5. To prevent temporary files opened when viewing PDF on the Web from appearing in the "recent files" list, set your mailcap entry as follows: application/pdf;acroread -tempFile %s 6. Acrobat Reader does not warn the user when the preferences file cannot be written. Please make sure '$HOME/.acrorc' is writable if you wish to save preferences. 7. Window managers other than those listed in the "Getting Started Guide" are not supported. 8. Users cannot print password-protected PDF documents to PostScript from the command line even though they are able to print the files from Acrobat Reader. 9. When operating in a heterogenious enviroment or using Novell servers, we recommend you avoid giving PDF files long names (greater than 32 characters). A Novell server displays the long file name to a Macintosh user, but the Macintosh Operating System prevents Acrobat from opening the file. This is not a problem on Windows because Novell truncates the name to 8.3 structure. 10. In a heterogeneous environment, all cross-document links made from Windows list the path as all uppercase letters. Acrobat Reader may not be able to locate the file specified in the path if UNIX sees the path in mixed case instead of all upper- or lowercase. 11. Modal dialog boxes may appear to be "buried" behind the main document window. When they are behind the main window, they are still active and prevent the user from doing anything. To bring the dialog to the front, click anywhere in the main window. You can now dismiss the dialog and proceed. 12. At the command line, type 'acroread -help' or 'acroread -helpall' for more information on command line options. Note that when using these command lines you must supply a DISPLAY variable if one is not already defined in your environment. 13. On a Tektronics X-Terminal: If displaying a document in Full Screen mode using a black background, a small white line will appear along the bottom and right edges of the background. This is due to a problem in the olwm running locally on the X-Terminal and is not an Acrobat bug. 14. Characters in PDF files that are not part of the ISO8859 encodings will not display when the text is selected and pasted elsewhere. This is most notable with the Registered and Trademark symbols. Printing is not affected and will work fine. 15. Printing: no document printed and/or error in lp log. When you lp foo.ps, it creates a symbolic link from the spool file to the foo.ps file. This saves space on the file system. Unfortunately, Acrobat creates a temporary file to spool, writes the PostScript out, and then deletes the temporary file before the lpd process can get hold of it. SOLUTION: Include the "-c" option (copy) on the lp command line. This forces the lp process to copy the file to the spool area instead of making a link. 16. In Acrobat 3.0 it is possible to give a PDF file attributes for how it should open (with or without Tool bar, etc.) To make Acrobat ignore the "Open" settings, keep the CTRL and Shift keys pressed down when clicking OK in the File > Open dialog box. For example, when opening a file which has been set to hide the Tool bar, it is not possible to then show the Tool bar for the file once it is open. If you need the Tool bar displayed, you should close the file and re-open it making Acrobat ignore the "Open" settings. SunOS-specific Information -------------------------- 1. SunOS 4.1.3 or 4.1.4 users running the X11/NeWS server: You must install patch number T100444 (with a minor number greater than 73) to your system before the application can be run. This patch fixes a problem in the X11/NeWS server that prevents all X Window System clients built with Motif 1.2.3 from hanging their server. Under certain circumstances on SunOS 4.1.3 or 4.1.4 systems running this patched X11/NeWS server, the session may still hang due to a different X11/NeWS server problem we recently discovered. The cause of this hang is not yet determined. Multiple clicks in the scroll bars to move the view pane seem to cause this problem. The problem is intermittent and cannot be reproduced with regularity. We are working with Sun to find the cause for this problem. For now we recommend that you run the application with an X11R5 server obtained from a third party or you may obtain the sources for the server from the X Window Consortium, Inc., and build your own. 2. Acrobat Search running in SunOS cannot connect to or use indexes that are uppercase. To make the index available, convert all filenames of the index and its associated directory to lowercase. For example, if your index is named "HOMEINDEX.PDX" the associated directory is "HOMEINDEX". Rename the .PDX file using lowercase letters, to "homeindex.pdx". Then, rename the directory to "homeindex" and all the subdirectories and files inside it to lowercase names. 3. To turn off the warning message presented in regards to the above issue, you can redirect the standard output and standard error streams to /dev/null or you can get a different server. Solaris-specific Information ---------------------------- 1. Text colors may change depending on zoom factor. This occurs when working in Solaris on a Sparcstation with a CG14 frame buffer and is a known problem with the CG14 frame buffer. Please contact Sun Microsystems for a patch. The following patches are available and should correct the problem: Solaris Release Patch id --------------- --------- 2.5.1 103794-01 2.5 103074-02 2.4 101922-15 2.3 101594-18 2. A segmentation fault will occur when launching Acrobat Reader if your PSRESOURCEPATH includes /usr/openwin/lib/X11. This directory does not contain Type1 PostScript fonts and should not be included in the path statement. HP-UX-specific Information -------------------------- 1. You might receive warning messages indicating missing fonts. There are several messages you could receive depending on your configuration. - You are displaying on an X server that has no HP-ROMAN8 font defined. The message you receive is: Warning: No fonts available with charset "HP-ROMAN8", using "ISO8859-1" In this situation, upper-ascii characters will display incorrectly. To fix this, change your language to an ISO8859 language (e.g., setenv LANG american.iso88591). - The variable fontList is specified and its encoding doesn't match the encoding of the application. If you specified an ISO font list, you will receive an error that says the encoding for fontList doesn't match the locales encoding. You need to change your LANG variable as listed above. - The Helvetica used by the Motif toolkit is not available on the system in the hp-roman8 encoding. The message you might receive is: Warning: Cannot convert string "-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-hp-roman8" to type FontStruct This occurs when you are running on HP but displaying on a non-HP system. To fix this, set an application resource for fontList to specify a font that exists on the system. 2. The HP Motif library uses different virtual key bindings than Sun's. As a result, when running on a Sun and displaying on an HP, the keys for DeleteLine, DeleteChar, InsertLine, and InsertChar may not be properly defined by default. You can tell if you get warnings of the form 'Warning: cannot convert string "DeleteChar" to type VirtualBinding'. One consequence of this is that the Esc key on some HP keyboards will not work to exit Full Screen mode. To fix this, load a file with the appropriate key bindings using the "xmbind" command. See the man page for xmbind for where it looks for the file. Check the bindings using "xprop -root | grep BIND". The resulting string should include hpDeleteLine, hpDeleteChar, hpInsertLine, and hpInsertChar. AIX-specific Information ------------------------ None at this time. IRIX-specific Information ------------------------- None at this time. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, the Acrobat logo, and PostScript are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated or its subsidiaries and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Digital is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation. HP is a registered trademark and HP-UX is a trademark of Hewlett-Packard Company. IBM, AIX, and OS/2 are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks and Windows NT is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Motif is a trademark of Open Software Foundation, Inc. IRIX is a trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Solaris is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., which has not tested or approved this product. Sun, SunOS, and OpenWindows are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. SPARC is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc. SPARCstation is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc., licensed exclusively to Sun Microsystems, Inc. and is based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company, Ltd. X Window System is a trademark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All other products or name brands are trademarks of their respective holders. Copyright 1983 - 1997 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.