Replace Adobe Reader?

[Paul Johnson]

I don't think that's monstrous at all. To put things in perspective, that
100MB that you call "all this bloat" is about ten US cents worth of disk
space or less. 100MB used to be a lot of disk space. Today it's next to
nothing.

Still, why waste space on deadweight if you don't have to? That's like
saying spamvertising is a good advertising model because you offload the
entire cost of advertising onto the recipient.

Although I've never used it myself, many people like Foxit reader.

It's not free nor generic, though.

 

[Paul Johnson]

The first ones in line should be the open sauce* programmers from Mozilla.

Why? I haven't experienced any bundled stuff with their software. And
what's wrong with free software? Without the source, there's no public
review of the code, thus no assurance the product does what it claims and
doesn't do anything nefarious.

Next, Adobe. Then, the dingbats who gave us Nero, one of the strangest
pieces of software I've seen in a long time.

Nero isn't their worst offense. PostScript is.

 

[Paul Johnson]

Please avoid quoting in backwards order.
http://wiki.ursine.ca/Best_Online_Quoting_Practices

Isn't the problem that it offers more than most users need? Most users
only need to read documents not to edit content!

Adobe Reader doesn't have any functionality to edit a PDF beyond basic
fill-out-the-form type stuff; it's not really an editor of any kind.

 

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Why? I haven't experienced any bundled stuff with their software. And
what's wrong with free software? Without the source, there's no public
review of the code, thus no assurance the product does what it claims and
doesn't do anything nefarious.

It's not a question of bundled software. Rather, they broke the bookmark
search function. Imagine this:

You open a Word document, and press CTRL-F to search for a word in the
document. The search thing finds the word, opens a new window, and shows you
only the word. It gives you no clue as to where the word is in the document.
It answers only one of the user's questions: "Does the word exist in the
document?" If a word processor did that, you would begin thinking about the
best way to murder the programmer(s).

That's what happened to the bookmark search function in Mozilla products. It
worked beautifully in Netscape. When this is mentioned in Moz newsgroups,
the response is "Well, we didn't use Netscape code. We started from
scratch".

Excuse me??? That's as stupid as the line I've heard from tech support
people at my phone company:

Me: I can't get mail from your server as of an hour ago. Any idea when it'll
be fixed?
Tech: That's odd - nobody else has mentioned this problem.
Me: I called my son. He's in a different house with a different computer.
He's having the same problem.
Tech: OK....let's go over some of your settings.

Duh.

 

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Why? I haven't experienced any bundled stuff with their software. And
what's wrong with free software? Without the source, there's no public
review of the code, thus no assurance the product does what it claims and
doesn't do anything nefarious.

I have no problem with free software, by the way. But, for some projects,
like Mozilla, the work culture was broken, and may still be. Having said
this, I use Firefox because for my purposes, it's "less bad" than IE with
regard to certain features.

Nero isn't their worst offense. PostScript is.

I know. I mentioned Nero as a completely separate product.

 

[Tom Willett]

The free Foxit Reader from foxitsoftware.com works just fine on Windows.


| |
| > Are there any good, free, generic replacements for the Adobe Reader?
|
| For Windows? No. For Linux? Yes. xpdf, kpdf, pdf2html... just look for
| packages matching regexp .*pdf.*...
|

 

[Eric]

Still, why waste space on deadweight if you don't have to? That's like
saying spamvertising is a good advertising model because you offload the
entire cost of advertising onto the recipient.

You're right. Software should not use more disk space just because it's
cheap and most users have plenty to spare.
What version Adobe Reader are you running?
Version 6 was very slow, and appears to be the newest version for WinME.
Version 7.0.7 is fast enough, requires XP, and takes up 65.09MB space on my
PC according to the Add/Remove program window.
There's a version 8? I haven't seen it yet..

My first hard drive was 40MB. I may have had an even smaller one before
that..

It's not free nor generic, though.

What do you mean? Last I downloaded Foxit, it was free and generic and
tiny.
It is just one exe file of 2828KB.
Check www.foxitsoftware.com.

 

[Paul Johnson]

I have no problem with free software, by the way. But, for some projects,
like Mozilla, the work culture was broken, and may still be. Having said
this, I use Firefox because for my purposes, it's "less bad" than IE with
regard to certain features.

Aah, OK. Yeah, the Moz folks have a tendency to piss off the open source
community, too. Firefox and Thunderbird recently forked with some
developers going with the new GNU Iceweasel/Icedove projects that resulted
from the forks. Debian Linux dropped Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird
almost instantly in favor of the GNU versions.

I know. I mentioned Nero as a completely separate product.

True, but the way it was worded implied that was the reason that justifies
Adobe going out of business post-haste. )

 

[Paul Johnson]

It's not a question of bundled software. Rather, they broke the bookmark
search function. Imagine this:

You open a Word document, and press CTRL-F to search for a word in the
document. The search thing finds the word, opens a new window, and shows
you only the word. It gives you no clue as to where the word is in the
document. It answers only one of the user's questions: "Does the word
exist in the document?" If a word processor did that, you would begin
thinking about the best way to murder the programmer(s).

That's what happened to the bookmark search function in Mozilla products.
It worked beautifully in Netscape. When this is mentioned in Moz
newsgroups, the response is "Well, we didn't use Netscape code. We started
from scratch".

Excuse me??? That's as stupid as the line I've heard from tech support
people at my phone company:

That would be a non-sequitor. Mozilla did use Netscape's code up until
version 0.7 of Mozilla Navigator: Everyone hated it. Users hated it, and
the programmers hated it more. So they dumped the code and started
entirely from scratch. And not like Microsoft starts from scratch where
they cruft-and-paste from what looks good from older products and calling
it a fresh rewrite, either. We're talking a full, complete rewrite
starting from #define <stdio.h> and working from there. Of course the bugs
and features are going to change; it's unavoidable.

I feel your pain, though. I've been looking to retire my 1995.5 Kia
Sportage. The problem is, the only thing that is as small as a mid-90s
Kia, with 4 wheel drive and as much power, capacity, fuel economy and
turning ability, is a mid-90s Kia. Even the new Hyundai Sportage
(confusingly and incorrectly labelled Kia Sportage) sucks: It gets worse
mileage, doesn't turn around in a downtown intersection, somewhat less
generous interior and won't even fit into a compact space (the original
4-door Kia Sportage could park in a compact space with enough room left
over to park a 2-door Sportage behind it). And the only thing that's
managed to have 4 wheel drive, match the fuel mileage and ground clearance
of my truck is the 2007 Ford Escape Hybrid, and I'm not going to pay three
times as much as the vehicle's worth to get a vehicle that's even harder to
find a parking space for. Is it really too much to ask that I can get a
new truck that's 150HP or better (Portland has *really short* freeway
onramps), gets 30MPG (that's what I get now, **** paying more for gas), 4WD
(I love camping but refuse to camp anyplace that takes or requires
reservation), stickshift (I've yet to find an automatic that can do it's
job better than I can), with at least 8 inches of ground clearance (I need
to be able to drive over superfluous curbs in parking lots and somewhat
strange terrain offroad), can pull a u-turn in a three-lane street (nobody
in this town puts up building numbers, finding addresses can be a pain),
absolutely no larger than the original Sportage (cheaper or easier to park
downtown, easier to maneuver, and a smaller target for people who are
guilty of driving while Californian)?

 

[Paul Johnson]

Please avoid quoting in backwards order.
http://wiki.ursine.ca/Best_Online_Quoting_Practices

My only point here was that complaining about the *size* of a program that
uses under ten cents worth of disk space is just silly.

Too many people are living in the past when they look at the size of a
program. They see a number in the tens or hundreds of megabytes, and all
they can do is remember how small their drives used to be and how much
that amount of disk space used to cost. So their immediate reaction is
"bloat."

Today's programs *are* bigger than yesterday's programs, and that's
because they have more functionality.

Is the functionality necessary or is it just chrome nobody uses? Most of
most office suites falls in to the latter category, for example, and
certainly qualifies as bloat. A software package should do one thing and
one thing well, it shouldn't try to do the job of 20 or 30 smaller, pipable
tools with all but a small handful going unused by most users...

To me, that's good, not bad. That 100MB for a current version of Adobe
Reader costs considerably less than the disk space for whatever version of
Adobe Reader was current a few years ago.

Why? It's not like Adobe Reader does appreciably more than it did a few
years ago.

The product itself remains free, and as far as the disk space it takes up,
we now get more functionality for less money. That's not something I want
to complain about.

Adobe Reader is, has, and probably always will be proprietary software
AFAICT. You're welcome to link to their license statement or source code
and prove me wrong, though, but there is nothing I can find that indicates
Adobe Anything is free.

If someone doesn't need the extra functionality, that's fine. Don't use
it. Or use an older version. Or use an alternative pdf reader. But don't
complain about getting more for less.

The complaint is that they're getting the same for more.

The same is true of Windows. Windows XP uses much more disk space than,
for example, Windows 3.0 did. But in most people's view, it's a giant
improvement over Windows 3.0. It does much more, does it better, is more
secure, is more stable, etc. The disk space Windows XP takes is worth two
US dollars or so.

But a Windows license costs as much as the whole hard drive, and for what it
takes in hard disk space to install Windows before patching and installing
software, you can have a complete system fully ready, willing and capable
of office productivity and home multimedia on Linux. You're spending a lot
more money to get worse results in the end with Windows compared to other
available options.

I can't remember how much Windows 3.0 took, or exactly what disk prices
were like in those days, but almost certainly it was more than $2 worth.
To me that's not bloat. That's *real* progress.

It's bloat. Progress would have been to chop out any code that hasn't had a
security review in recent history or once there's a better method and
rewrite it. The free software world does it this way, which is why free
software packages frequently offer as much or greater functionality and
security in a smaller footprint than their proprietary competition.

 

[Paul Johnson]

Please don't quote in backwards order; see
http://wiki.ursine.ca/Best_Online_Quoting_Practices

The free Foxit Reader from foxitsoftware.com works just fine on Windows.

Foxit Reader isn't free, AFAICT. You're welcome to prove me wrong by
pointing to their source downloads.

 

[Paul Johnson]

You're right. Software should not use more disk space just because it's
cheap and most users have plenty to spare.
What version Adobe Reader are you running?

I'm not. I use kpdf, which is free and not-bloated. It's part of the
kdegraphics package, which includes a lot more software than just kdpf, and
comes in at about 7MB for the whole package. http://kpdf.kde.org/

Version 6 was very slow, and appears to be the newest version for WinME.
Version 7.0.7 is fast enough, requires XP, and takes up 65.09MB space on
my PC according to the Add/Remove program window.
There's a version 8? I haven't seen it yet..

My first hard drive was 40MB. I may have had an even smaller one before
that..


What do you mean? Last I downloaded Foxit, it was free and generic and
tiny.

Foxit is not free, foxit is proprietary. Foxit is not generic because it is
a name brand itself. Granted, I didn't look very hard, and you're welcome
to prove me wrong, but it helps to know what free means in terms of
software.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

 

[Eric]

I'm not. I use kpdf, which is free and not-bloated. It's part of the
kdegraphics package, which includes a lot more software than just kdpf,
and
comes in at about 7MB for the whole package. http://kpdf.kde.org/

Sorry if you thought that comment was directed at you. I wasn't asking what
version Adobe Reader you are running then. I was referring to the one who
said they have one taking up 100MB.

Foxit is not free, foxit is proprietary. Foxit is not generic because it
is
a name brand itself. Granted, I didn't look very hard, and you're welcome
to prove me wrong, but it helps to know what free means in terms of
software.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

I didn't bother to click your link because it doesn't matter what your
definition of "free software" is. Apparently it is different than the
general population of today's computer users. The fact is, it doesn't
matter if it's considered "proprietary" and doesn't come with source code.
If you can download it and run it and never have to pay anyone, it is free.
It doesn't expire after 30 days. You may have to pay them for additional
features most people don't need, but just to use it to view pdf files it is
considered freeware. Foxit reader is also much smaller than your 7MB
bloatware. Unzipped, their latest version is one 3700KB exe file.

 

[JoeSpareBedroom]

That would be a non-sequitor. Mozilla did use Netscape's code up until
version 0.7 of Mozilla Navigator: Everyone hated it. Users hated it, and
the programmers hated it more. So they dumped the code and started
entirely from scratch. And not like Microsoft starts from scratch where
they cruft-and-paste from what looks good from older products and calling
it a fresh rewrite, either. We're talking a full, complete rewrite
starting from #define <stdio.h> and working from there. Of course the
bugs
and features are going to change; it's unavoidable.

Yeah, but "using the code" is actually irrelevant. Design was the issue. You
can decide to have a feature, and other than ease of programming, you can
program that design with any number of languages. Further, within the same
language, one programmer may make a feature work with 500 lines of code,
while another might use 2000 lines of code. The problem with the Moz
projects was that the design phase was too much in the hands of programmers.
This is almost always a bad idea for software that users often "live in" all
day long.

I feel your pain, though. I've been looking to retire my 1995.5 Kia
Sportage. The problem is, the only thing that is as small as a mid-90s
Kia, with 4 wheel drive and as much power, capacity, fuel economy and
turning ability, is a mid-90s Kia. Even the new Hyundai Sportage
(confusingly and incorrectly labelled Kia Sportage) sucks: It gets worse
mileage, doesn't turn around in a downtown intersection, somewhat less
generous interior and won't even fit into a compact space (the original
4-door Kia Sportage could park in a compact space with enough room left
over to park a 2-door Sportage behind it). And the only thing that's
managed to have 4 wheel drive, match the fuel mileage and ground clearance
of my truck is the 2007 Ford Escape Hybrid, and I'm not going to pay three
times as much as the vehicle's worth to get a vehicle that's even harder
to
find a parking space for. Is it really too much to ask that I can get a
new truck that's 150HP or better (Portland has *really short* freeway
onramps), gets 30MPG (that's what I get now, **** paying more for gas),
4WD
(I love camping but refuse to camp anyplace that takes or requires
reservation), stickshift (I've yet to find an automatic that can do it's
job better than I can), with at least 8 inches of ground clearance (I need
to be able to drive over superfluous curbs in parking lots and somewhat
strange terrain offroad), can pull a u-turn in a three-lane street (nobody
in this town puts up building numbers, finding addresses can be a pain),
absolutely no larger than the original Sportage (cheaper or easier to park
downtown, easier to maneuver, and a smaller target for people who are
guilty of driving while Californian)?

If you could get the car's designers into a locked room for a little chat,
they'd probably tell you the changes came from focus groups. I have a friend
who used to work for a company which coordinated focus groups for clients
who needed customer feedback. She left. She couldn't take it any more. Most
of the time, the only people they could get to participate were those who
had nothing better to do with their time. They weren't the sharpest knives
in the drawer.

Last year, Reynolds decided their plastic food wrap needed a sliding cutter
on the box, instead of the toothed metal edge that's been around forever.
It's an awful idea, so out of curiosity, I e-mailed them to ask about the
change. The response: Focus groups said it was a cool idea. In my
imagination, I see a room with a group of people who are unable to operate a
box. This, in turn, reminds me of a Far Side cartoon: Two guys at the
breakfast table, with a box of cereal called "Dorkies". One's reading the
"cold cereal cookbook" and saying "Wait, Corey. The cereal goes in first,
then the milk.

 

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Aah, OK. Yeah, the Moz folks have a tendency to piss off the open source
community, too. Firefox and Thunderbird recently forked with some
developers going with the new GNU Iceweasel/Icedove projects that resulted
from the forks. Debian Linux dropped Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird
almost instantly in favor of the GNU versions.


True, but the way it was worded implied that was the reason that justifies
Adobe going out of business post-haste. )

OK. I'll rewrite it. Tomorrow. Maybe.


The best line I saw in the Moz newsgroups involved the evil of "central
control" in software projects, as if having a coherent plan was one step shy
of having Josef Stalin run the project. I'd occasionally point out
advice from software gurus like Steve McConnell or Gerald Weinberg, but
inevitably, someone would figure out that the former worked for Microsoft
and the latter was a professor for an evil organization (SUNY-Binghamton),
and that meant these two sources had nothing of value to say.

 

[Paul Johnson]

I didn't bother to click your link because it doesn't matter what your
definition of "free software" is. Apparently it is different than the
general population of today's computer users.

The general population of today's computer users says you're wrong.
Wikipedia is edited by the general population of today's computer users.

The fact is, it doesn't matter if it's considered "proprietary" and
doesn't come with source code. If you can download it and run it and never
have to pay anyone, it is free.

No, thats no-charge, not free. The software and it's developers do not
respect your freedoms as a user, therefor not free.

Foxit reader is also much smaller than your 7MB bloatware. Unzipped,
their latest version is one 3700KB exe file.

That's just how it's distributed with other programs in kdegraphics, which
contains all the optional graphics-related KDE packages (they're bundled
together because many people install them together whether or not they're
bundled; with free software, things get bundled because people actually use
the software that way and not because of some marketing agreement). Actual
program size is 41 kilobytes.

baloo@ursa-major:~$ ls /usr/bin/kpdf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 41K 2006-11-14 16:10 /usr/bin/kpdf

Foxit is *ninety times* that size.

 

[Eric]

The general population of today's computer users says you're wrong.
Wikipedia is edited by the general population of today's computer users.

I don't know where Wikipedia would have gotten a definition of freeware that
includes "must distribute with source code", but for most people, if they
can download a program and run it without paying anyone it is freeware.
Most computer users do not contribute to Wikipedia. If you check a software
site, such as tucows.com, it will label such programs as freeware. You're
not talking about freeware. You're just talking about "open source" and no
one cares. If you're looking for a free, small, efficient program to view
pdf files, you shouldn't need to change the source. If you want more
functionality than a program like Foxit provides, you pay someone or write
your own.

No, thats no-charge, not free. The software and it's developers do not
respect your freedoms as a user, therefor not free.


That's just how it's distributed with other programs in kdegraphics, which
contains all the optional graphics-related KDE packages (they're bundled
together because many people install them together whether or not they're
bundled; with free software, things get bundled because people actually
use
the software that way and not because of some marketing agreement).
Actual
program size is 41 kilobytes.

baloo@ursa-major:~$ ls /usr/bin/kpdf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 41K 2006-11-14 16:10 /usr/bin/kpdf

Foxit is *ninety times* that size.

What is 41KB? A compiled executable to view pdf files? Where do we
download it? Is it a standalone program or do you need other software to
run it?
Does it even run on Windows? Your directory listing looks like 'nix. This
is a Windows newsgroup.

 

[Paul Johnson]

I don't know where Wikipedia would have gotten a definition of freeware
that includes "must distribute with source code", but for most people, if
they can download a program and run it without paying anyone it is
freeware. Most computer users do not contribute to Wikipedia. If you
check a software site, such as tucows.com, it will label such programs as
freeware.

Nobody takes tucows seriously, though. Freeware would be the right word for
no-charge proprietary software. Free software is about freedom.

What is 41KB? A compiled executable to view pdf files? Where do we
download it?

Debian mirrors are where I get it. This has a few thousand answers: Google
is your friend.

Is it a standalone program or do you need other software to
run it?

kpdf can be downloaded standalone in the kpdf package or bundled in
kdegraphics depending on where you find it.

Does it even run on Windows? Your directory listing looks like 'nix.
This is a Windows newsgroup.

True, but not everything can be done most efficiently in Windows. Using
PDFs is one of them.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Paul

I cannot figure how the introduction of Linux to a discussion about
Adobe being used on a Windows XP platform. Clearly you are way off
topic! I thought you were an advocate for especting Usenet
conventions? Clearly not!


--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Paul Johnson]

I cannot figure how the introduction of Linux to a discussion about
Adobe being used on a Windows XP platform.

It wasn't an introduction to Linux.

Clearly you are way off topic!

Somewhat offtopic in that Adobe Reader isn't entirely on-topic for this
group. Not way off-topic, it had a point. Eric was claiming that Adobe
Reader isn't bloated, I had proof to the contrary. Just because it's not
bloated relative to other Windows software speaks more about the state of
the platform as a whole than about Linux and demonstrates the difference
between what you get when the motivation driving things forward is paying
programmers by the line of code instead of developing the most efficient
product.