Re: Why is acroread so popular, and why are the free alternatives not good enough?
On Fri, 22 Feb 2008, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> According to <URL:http://popcon.skolelinux.org/unknown/by_vote>,
> acroread is the most popular package in Debian Edu that is missing in
> Debian. 46% of the population got it installed, and 30% used it last
> week. Anyone know why it is so popular? What features does it
> provide that the free PDF viewers do not? Is there anything we could
> do to fulfil this need with free software?
acrobat is able to handle forms in PDFs, and there are quite some PDFs which
are only viewable in acrobat.
also acrobat provides _the_ feature of "downgrading" a pdf file, it can
convert those to ps+level without rastering the
fonts (and yes i'm talking about the reader, just start it from commandline
..), the feature is really helpful if your printer is a postscript printer,
but is not able to print your document...
--
Florian Reitmeir
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