ReadMe Information for Adobe (R) Acrobat(R) Reader v. 4.0 for UNIX(R) ============================================================================== Updated: 6 - 4 - 99 Welcome to the Adobe Acrobat Reader for Unix. Below are known issues regarding running the Reader on the various platforms, as well as regarding running inside of the Netscape web browser. Please read this file completely to get the most out of your Acrobat experience. Thanks for using Adobe Acrobat! Adobe Acrobat Reader - Platforms, Availability, and Redistribution ------------------------------------------------------------------ Versions of the Acrobat Reader and Acrobat Reader with Search are available for 32-bit Windows (Windows 95, and NT 4.0), Macintosh (PowerPC), Sun Solaris, SunOS, HP-UX, IBM AIX, and SGI IRIX. In addition, versions of the Acrobat Reader are now also available for Intel based Linux and Digital Unix. 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; 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 206-675-6404 (or) 900-555-4400 Acrobat Technical Support for Macintosh 206-675-6204 (or) 900-555-3300 Acrobat Technical Support for Windows 206-675-6304 (or) 900-555-2200 Known Issues with Acrobat Reader 4.0 ------------------------------------ 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 $HOME/.acrorc before running Acrobat 4.0 for the first time. This ensures the default preference settings are used when you first run Acrobat 4.0. This is not, however, a necessity, and may actually be undesirable if you wish to continue running Acrobat Exchange 3.0. 4. Files listed in the File menu are "recent files" and depend upon exact path names. If you open a file in a session using automounter and the automounter goes down, attempting to open the "recent file" will give a "No such file or directory" error. This also occurs when the file is moved, renamed, or Reader is run from a different machine that does not have the same file systems mounted. 5. To prevent temporary files (for instance opened from the Web) from appearing in the "recent files" list, set your mailcap entry as follows: application/pdf;acroread -tempFile %s 6. Acrobat Reader does not warn the user when the preferences file cannot be written. Please make sure '$HOME/.acrorc' is writable if you wish to save preferences. 7. Some Window managers may work better than others. Specifically, we have tested CDE, KDE, and Openwindows. 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 heterogenous network enviroment 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. 10. 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. 11. 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 still supply a DISPLAY variable if one is not already defined in your environment. 12. 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. 13. 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. 14. 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 or lpr command in the print dialog box. This forces the lp process to copy the file to the spool area instead of making a link. 15. In Acrobat 3.0 and later 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. 16. 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, Acrobat Reader version 4.0 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. 17. Using Acrobat Search. If you want to create full text search indexes that can be reliably used across platforms, you must use ISO 9660 file naming conventions for the indexed files (8.3 uppercase, restricted character set). If you don't use such names, the UNIX Reader will attempt to guess what the Unix filenames are. This causes delays in searching, and may result in the file not being found. 18. The select graphics tool and column text select tool are nested under the select text tool. To select one of these other tools, click and hold down the select text tool button, then drag your mouse over to the tool you wish to use. 19. Although there is a "Use Page Cache" option, it is disabled inside the Viewer for 4.0. It will be enabled for 4.05. Known Issues for Acrobat Reader Working with Netscape ----------------------------------------------------- ACROBAT WON'T LAUNCH. If you encounter problems where PDF documents do not view correctly in Netscape, Netscape hangs, or document transmission stalls, you may disable PDF viewing in the Netscape window and use the viewer as a "Helper Application". To disable PDF rendering in the Netscape 3.0 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/Acrobat4 then enter the following in the text box for the application: /usr/local/Acrobat4/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. SOME FORMS CAUSE "SAVE AS" DIALOG Some forms cause the Save As dialog to come up. This is because certain forms return Forms Data Format files (.fdf) and Netscape is not set up to handle this mime type. This is easy to fix; following are directions for Navigator 4.x: -Bring up Preferences dialog by selecting the Edit menu, then the "preferences" menu item. -Under the Navigator section, select Applications. -Click on the New button. -For Description, type Forms Data Format -For Mime type enter: application/vnd.fdf -For Suffixes enter: fdf -Click Application -Type /usr/local/Acrobat4/bin/acroread %s iconic (note: your path may vary) -Click OK Navigator 3.x: -Choose General Preferences from the options menu -In the General Preferences window that appears, click the Helpers Tab. -Click "Create New Type" -Mime Type: application -Mime SubType: vnd.fdf -Click OK Now application/vnd.fdf should be selected. If not, scroll to it in the File type list. -Under the text field "File Extensions, type: fdf -Click "launch the application" -Type in the application text field: /usr/local/Acrobat4/bin/acroread %s iconic (note: your path may vary) -Click OK Netscape is now ready to accept forms data format. RUNNING IN 256 COLORS OR LESS. Often the viewer may launch in greyscale mode when running inside of Netscape as a plugin. This will happen when your default visual has a color depth of 8 planes or less (PseudoColor for instance).This is because Netscape does not "grab" enough colors for Acrobat. You can work around this problem by launching an instance of the Acrobat Reader and displaying it on the current screen before launching Netscape. Netscape will then use the Color Map that Acrobat has created and will allow the viewer to run as a plugin with enough colors. This won't be an issue if you are running with 16 or more color planes. CAN'T SUBMIT FORMS FROM NETSCAPE. Submitting forms on the web will not work if Netscape has warned you that it found a lock file in the .Netscape folder. This warning (which occurs when you first launch Netscape) usually means you have another copy of Netscape running. You may fix this problem by insuring that only one copy of Netscape is running. If a lock file is left around because of a Netscape crash, you may simply delete the .Netscape/lock file. 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. 3. We have experienced crashes while trying to fill in forms using the X server that ships with _all_ versions of Solaris 2.6. The workaround would be to run the X server on another machine, or to run on Solaris 2.7 or 2.51. 4. There is no search functionality available for the x86 Solaris version of the Acrobat Reader. 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. 3. Support for viewing/printing files with embedded ICC profiles, a new feature of Acrobat 4.0, is not supported on the HP platform due to compiler issues. Currently, if you try to print a file with an embedded ICC profile, your viewer may display a bus error, and possibly crash. AIX-Specific Information ------------------------ 1. There is a new Netscape browser plugin for AIX. It should be considered beta quality, since it was added just before ship time. When using Acrobat as a plugin under AIX, be aware of the following caveats: A) Acrobat will seem to launch again every time you view a new PDF file. B) It works best with Netscape version 4.05 or 4.08. If you use it with Navigator 4.5, you may experience crashes if you try to load more than one PDF file. We plan to have these issues fully resolved for Acrobat 4.05. IRIX-Specific Information ------------------------- None at this time. OSF-Specific Information ------------------------ None at this time. Linux-Specific Information -------------------------- 1. The Acrobat Reader for Linux was built on a 2.0.0 kernel. 2. There is currently no search functionality available for the Linux Acrobat Reader. 3. The current Reader is "libc" based as opposed to glibc. This means that the Acrobat Reader has been linked with libc.so.5 as opposed to libc.so.6. The repercussions of this are mainly that if you are using a "glibc" based version of Netscape, you will not be able to launch the Reader as a plugin. Currently, the rpm version of Netscape is glibc based. Since things are moving in the glibc direction, we will be providing a glibc linked version of the Reader in the 4.05 version. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 - 1999 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.