Acrobat 9 - a disaster

[Dov Isaacs]

Installing Acrobat does NOT install Reader. Adobe Reader is a program
that is a subset of Adobe Acrobat simply for displaying PDF files plus
providing support for a number of other PDF file operations.

Installing Adobe Acrobat installs a "viewer" (the program called "Acrobat")
which is a superset of the functions of Adobe Reader. It also installs
PDF creation software including Acrobat Distiller (a legacy method of
producing PDF by converting PostScript to PDF) and the PDFMaker modules
for other applications including Microsoft Office.

In terms of the ability to "see PDFs like they do," having Adobe Reader
on the same system as Adobe Acrobat is not going to assist you. In terms
of proper engineering and QA discipline, such testing should occur on a
system that has only the operating system installed, no "extra fonts"
installed, and Adobe Reader set with all default options. Otherwise, your
tests are somewhat polluted by your environment.

FWIW, in my many years of experience in creating PDF files and distributing
them around the world, I never once found a need to test the files with
Reader. With only one exception have any recipients of my PDF files ever
had any problems and that exception has been when the recipients tried to
view the PDF files with the MacOS Preview application. (MacOS Preview is
known to be a fairly poor PDF viewer not fully and properly implementing
the PDF specification although it "loads" quickly!)

	- Dov

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Johnson [mailto:chinaski69 at gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 7:37 AM
> To: Dov Isaacs
> Cc: Framers E-mail List
> Subject: Re: Acrobat 9 - a disaster
> 
> Since when? Is that by design or by accident? Doesn't installing
> Acrobat also install Reader?
> 
> How many of my users have Acrobat installed? Of course I want Reader
> installed so I can see PDFs like they do.
> 
> On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 9:23 AM, Dov Isaacs <isaacs at adobe.com> wrote:
> > Although you CAN have both Reader and Acrobat installed simultaneously
> > (assuming the same version), it is very strongly NOT RECOMMENDED for a
> > number of very good reasons. It certainly does not add any functionality
> > to one's system. Having said that, I will add that having both Reader and
> > Acrobat of the same version on a system is most unlikely to cause the
> > symptoms described.
> >
> >        - Dov