Discussion of Acrobat & Reader Concurrent Installation (Was: Acrobat 9 - a disaster)

[Dov Isaacs]

Steve,

I never said that "Adobe says you should not install the same version
of Reader and Acrobat on the same system." That does not exist as an
official recommendation from either Adobe Technical Support or from the
Acrobat development organization. Having said that, as THE person within 
Adobe who deals with more of these PDF publishing workflow issues 
(producing, viewing, manipulating, and printing PDF files) than anyone 
else (since Acrobat 1.0) within Adobe and most anyone else in the industry,
I do believe that it is my responsibility to the end user community to 
share my experiences and recommendations.

No one is forcing you to accept my recommendations and you don't have to
accept my credentials for making those recommendations. And as I previously
mentioned, I don't believe that a concurrent installation of Acrobat
and Reader of the same version are the cause of the OP's originally-
described problem. But don't fool yourself into thinking that you are
doing any more due diligence in terms of testing a PDF file by opening
it on the same system in Reader as you created on with Acrobat.

And FWIW, the fact that the Acrobat and Reader installers don't prohibit
concurrent installation of Acrobat and Reader of the same version doesn't
mean that it is prudent or that I support it. My recommendations to the
Acrobat group over the years have been to disallow such installation; my
recommendations to you, the end users, is not to do such installations - I
have been very consistent about this particular issue. (And there are
a number of other issues where rational recommendations that I make that
would improve your use of Acrobat are not acted upon by the Acrobat group.
For good example of this - there is no good reason why the "Standard" 
joboptions of Acrobat exempt certain "system fonts" from being embedded 
in PDF files; that causes all sorts of problems later in workflows. One of
the first things I do after installation of Acrobat is to fix the system
permissions and modify the "Standard" joboptions to much more rational
settings. Note that Acrobat's web capture and Outlook PDF conversion do
not give you a choice as to which joboptions to use - they always use
"Standard" and thus, you'd better fix them if you want usable results!)

	- Dov

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Johnson [mailto:chinaski69 at gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 11:10 AM
> To: Dov Isaacs
> Cc: Framers E-mail List
> Subject: Re: Acrobat 9 - a disaster
> 
> Show me in writing where Adobe says you should not install the same
> version of Reader and Acrobat on the same system. I cannot find it.
> It's not on the download page of either product, which is where it
> should be. All I can find is info saying you should not install two
> different versions of the same product.
> 
> Even though you're an authority, all I have seen is unsupported
> statements like this saying "I heard that Adobe says you should not do
> this" but where is the statement against it saying why not? And if
> it's so dadgum important, why do the two products allow themselves to
> be installed side by side?
> 
> For several versions now, you cannot run both Acrobat and Reader at
> the same time. I think you're right that Acrobat doesn't install
> Reader. I must have done the Reader install separately.
> 
> The thing about wanting both Reader and Pro because of print/view
> differences is a few versions old but I remember there being
> situations in the past where viewing and printing with each product
> had differences.
> 
> On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Dov Isaacs <isaacs at adobe.com> wrote:
> > Guy,
> >
> > See previous responses. Yes, there are UI differences between
> > Acrobat and Reader, but unless you are invoking rather complex
> > Javascript routines that invoke functions that are allowed in
> > Acrobat but not Reader, other than font issues (you should NEVER,
> > repeat NEVER, repeat once again NEVER generate PDF files with
> > unembedded fonts), you should not see any real differences between
> > rendering in Acrobat versus Reader - and the font issue itself
> > would mean that you need to run in a separate environment to gauge
> > the effects of unembedded fonts.
> >
> >        - Dov
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Guy K. Haas [mailto:guy at hiskeyboard.com]
> >> Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 7:57 AM
> >> To: Dov Isaacs
> >> Cc: Framers E-mail List
> >> Subject: Re: Acrobat 9 - a disaster
> >>
> >> But, Dov---
> >>
> >> I have both installed so that when a reviewer runs into a problem, I can
> >> "see it their way".  The interfaces of the two are so different that
> >> it's sometimes handy to be able to do this.
> >>
> >> Would it be any less "NOT RECOMMENDED" if one had the Reader on a
> >> removable drive (such as a USB drive) and plugged it in only when needed?
> >>
> >> --Guy K. Haas
> >>    Software Exegete in Silicon Valley
> >>
> >>
> >> On 7/25/2010 7:23 AM, Dov Isaacs 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