Problem with playing video clips in FM 12 document viewed in Adobe Reader 11

[Mike Wickham]

Reader is basically a subset of Acrobat. Having both on the same machine 
doesn't necessarily accomplish anything that Acrobat can't do alone. 
More importantly, testing on the same machine doesn't give a true test 
of what it's like for another user with a different environment. For 
example, say you forget to embed fonts. Since Reader is on the same 
machine as where Acrobat created the PDF, it has access to the same 
installed fonts and will find them. But users viewing on other machines 
will likely suffer font substitutions and that result could be horrid.

Testing is important. I know that I have created forms in Acrobat in the 
past, that worked fine on my computer-- even after a sending them to 
myself in email-- but did not work on other machines because I had 
forgotten to set something. So testing on another computer can eliminate 
false positives.

As I recall, Dov Isaacs of Adobe recommended that testing was only 
really valid if done on a plain, vanilla computer that had the basic OS 
and default fonts installed, along with a single version of Reader-- 
which can be done in a virtual machine.

I do agree, though, that it was dumb to design Reader and Acrobat in a 
way that the various versions can corrupt other versions installed on 
the same computer. Adobe's many other software programs seem to allow 
installation of multiple versions without issues.

Mike Wickham

On 11/14/2014 7:28 AM, Steve Rickaby wrote:
> At 07:03 -0600 14/11/14, Mike Wickham wrote:
>
>> If you have Acrobat, you should not install Reader or the PDF Creation Add-on that comes with FrameMaker on that same computer.
> I'm sure this is true, Mike, but it's ultra-dumb: many folks *need* Acrobat Pro as well as Reader and FrameMaker. Are we supposed to buy an extra computer? (Rhetorical question).
>