[pdftex] [CTAN] Update: animate

[James Quirk]

On Fri, 4 May 2007, Victor Ivrii wrote:

> On 5/4/07, Martin Schröder <martin at oneiros.de> wrote:
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: CTAN Announcements <ctan-ann at dante.de>
> > Date: 03.05.2007 09:12
> > Subject: CTAN Update: animate
> > To: ctan-ann at dante.de
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 2 May 2007, Alexander Grahn submitted an update to the
> >
> >   animate>
> > package.
> >
> > Location on CTAN: /macros/latex/contrib/animate
> > Summary description: creating portable PDF animations from graphics
> > files and inline graphics
> > License type: lppl
> >
> > Announcement text:
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > This package provides an interface to create portable, JavaScript driven
> > PDF animations from sets of (vector) graphics files or from inline
> > (vector) graphics, such as LaTeX-picture, PSTricks or pgf/TikZ generated
> > pictures, or just from typeset text.
> >
> > It supports the usual PDF making workflows, i. e.  pdfLaTeX and LaTeX
> > -> dvips -> ps2pdf (Ghostscript).
> >
> > The resulting PDF can be viewed in current Adobe Readers on all
> > supported platforms.
> >
> > The new release is based on Optional Content Groups (OCGs), aka
> > PDF-Layers, to make animations fully functional in Adobe Reader 8 as well.
> > Interestingly, OCG-based animations perform better in older Reader
> > versions, which might be a bug in Reader 8. Therefore, a second version of
> > the package, `animate-noocg&#39;, is provided, which still uses the old,
> > non-OCG-based method.
Victor,

Now that AR8 is available for Linux I've been able to revisit the
problem your were having with the animate package, back in March.
Adobe have acknowledge the problem as a bug. Specifically,
the getfield.display property cannot be written to in a page-open 
(/PO) event; unless, as you noted, the PDF is forms-enabled.
For details, see the thread "AR8.1.1 Backwards Incompatibility"
at http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc433df and
"known issue #2" at:

http://blogs.adobe.com/acroread/2007/09/known_issues_with_adobe_reader_1.html
  
Cheers,

James