[pdftex] FYI: Feature Requests for Adobe Reader

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

Martin Schr{\"o}der writes about an Acrobat Reader feature request:

>> ...
>> # Reloading / Refreshing an opened PDF Document
>> If a PDF document is already being viewed in Adobe Reader and the
>> document's contents change from an external source (such as an
>> external PDF creator), the Reader should automatically reload the
>> document from the new contents (with the user's permission, of
>> course).
>> ...

In Acrobat Reader 5 on Unix systems, Ctl-W Ctl-left-arrow closes and
reopens the document at the current page.  Unfortunately, this feature
disappeared in later Reader releases, and that, plus their 4x larger
memory footprint and much longer startup time, means that I rarely use
them.

Here is another one that I dealt with earlier this week: a math paper
published in English in a Chinese journal contained Chinese characters
in the front matter on the first page.  It displays fine in Acrobat
Reader, gs, and gv on Windows (XP and VISTA), Mac OS X, and Unix
(Solaris and GNU/Linux), but fails to print on all of them: the
printer spits out a "font error" page.

I finally found a printing solution that works in Acrobat Reader and
Acrobat Professional on Mac OS X and Windows Vista, but not, alas, in
the Unix versions of Acrobat Reader. I put the solution in our FAQ on
printing:

	Follow the menu path <TT>File</TT> -&gt; <TT>Print</TT> -&gt;
	<TT>Advanced</TT> and select the button labeled 
	<TT CLASS="highlight">Print as Image</TT>.  That button
	appears to be available only on Mac OS X and Windows versions
	of the product.

The Unix Acrobat Reader's lack that critical button.

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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org  beebe at computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
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