[tex-live] PDF 1.5 by default in TL 2010

Philip TAYLOR P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk
Tue Jan 12 12:13:42 CET 2010


Having listened to the various arguments for and against,
I would now like to express my personal position.

For me, Adobe Acrobat 5.0.5 was the last successful
version before Adobe started to split out functionality
into so-called "Professional" and "Professional Extended"
versions, and therefore remains my choice even today.
Thus I would want to be able to view any PDFs generated
using TeX Live 2010 in Adobe Acrobat 5.0.5 or Adobe
Acrobat Reader 5.0.5.  I am far less interested in
how small or how large my PDFs are, since I can always
compress them using Adobe Acrobat 5.0.5.

On the other hand, I fully appreciate that not everyone
has access to Adobe Acrobat, and may prefer to generate
highly compressed PDFs right from the outset.

Thus I believe that the correct choice is to add one
or more options to the installer, such as :

     PDF : Optimise for compatibility (PDF 1.4)
           Optimise for size (PDF 1.5)

** Phil.


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