here we go again
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick May 26, 2009 9:51 AM EDT |
Adobe getting all shirty over their weak encryption, and invoking the DMCA to cover up. Last time they did this Dmitri Sklyarov spent more time in jail than a real criminal. |
| vainrveenr May 26, 2009 11:09 AM EDT |
Identical sentiments on Adobe's products from this same LXer commentator who writes at 'Four Linux Apps Worth Downloading', http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3821881/Fo...
Quoting:I have news for those silly FUDsters: there is a whole galaxy of great software beyond silly old Adobe, Photoshop, .... Quoting:Adobe Reader is for users who want a big fat bloated blob of spyware on their Linux PCs. KPDF, xpdf, and Ghostview are all excellent PDF readers, and Ghostview ignores any feeble Adobe copy protections. I have yet to find a PDF I could not read with one of these. Yep, agreed. |
| caitlyn May 26, 2009 2:10 PM EDT |
GIMP does about 90% of what Photoshop does anyway and you don't have to steal it. Going back to the story... All that's going to happen is what happened with libdvdcss. It's still out there, distros from countries that have nothing like the DMCA include it by default, others let you install it from repos located in such countries. In the end it gets used and the law is all but unenforceable. Has anyone ever been prosecuted for having libdvdcss installed in the U.S.? As the article notes, there are other apps that do the same thing that haven't been challenged. All Adobe gets out of this is satisfying a few paying customers and really angering the FOSS community. |
| tracyanne May 26, 2009 5:03 PM EDT |
Quoting:GIMP does about 90% of what Photoshop does The inverse is also almost probably true as well, except I can't think any good reason why I'd bother paying for it. I've managed to get the company I program for to use the Gimp for all our image processing needs, and other than the bloke who's fairly experienced with Photoshop having to relearn a few things, it does everything we need for our web graphics. |
| nikkels May 26, 2009 11:55 PM EDT |
KPDF, xpdf, and Ghostview are all excellent PDF readers, Sure they are , but they are missing something. I follow a language course, where they have embedded sound associated with some words. ( hope I said this right ) Meaning, I click on a word, and sound comes out ) Only adobe can read them, ( none of the above ) so it's not a useless thing at all. One of them can read a foreign language ( forgot which one ), but the produced sound is so bad , that .................( fill in the blanks ). Another...can kpdf rotate pages 180 degrees.?? adobe can and I use it regulary. Kghostview......stuffs up the layout of many pdf docs. What's so hot about that |
| gus3 May 27, 2009 12:30 AM EDT |
xpdf can rotate disc-wise or widdershins. Right-click on the page display. I've used rotated page plus full-screen as a sorta e-book reader. (For all you Terry Pratchett fans.) |
| caitlyn May 27, 2009 12:47 AM EDT |
Another pdf reader I've been pretty happy with is evince. But... yeah, there are still some only Acrobat Reader will handle. |
| nikkels May 27, 2009 12:59 AM EDT |
I just tried....no, it can't here.
right click gives me a small popup with
--page x
--add bookmark
--fit width no rotation where ever I look (( and yes, I got the right glasses on )) |
| jezuch May 27, 2009 2:11 AM EDT |
Quoting:KPDF AFAIK KPDF is deprecated in favor of Okular, which is a KPDF-based multi-format reader. |
| chalbersma May 27, 2009 2:19 AM EDT |
Free pdf readers will cover about 98% of the pdfs out there. For the last two percent there's google. |
| Sander_Marechal May 27, 2009 2:34 AM EDT |
Envince does a fine job for me, although it's font rendering could be better. The only PDFs it had trouble with were the PDF containing interactive forms from our Chamber of Commerce. |
| krisum May 27, 2009 8:50 AM EDT |
I need to use PDF-XChange viewer (http://www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/PDF-XChange_Tools/p...) to add annotations etc. to a PDF -- works like a charm with wine and is much smaller compared to acroread. It is also able to display PDFs that have problems with evince. Would be glad if someone knows anything else for linux that can add annotations to a PDF (pdfedit does not and is painful to use). |
| theboomboomcars May 27, 2009 9:17 AM EDT |
Quoting:Would be glad if someone knows anything else for linux that can add annotations to a PDF OpenOffice with the pdf edit addon can, though it was a bit clunky when I needed to use it, several months ago. |
| NoDough May 27, 2009 11:04 AM EDT |
>> OpenOffice with the pdf edit addon... I used it in just the last couple of weeks to annotate some site maps. Did the job fine, but it's evident that it's still pre-release. |
| tracyanne May 27, 2009 5:24 PM EDT |
For PDF Edit I've been using PSEdit, just save the PDF to PS then edit and save. |
| hkwint May 27, 2009 5:51 PM EDT |
Quoting:distros from countries that have nothing like the DMCA include it by default Many know Neelie Kroes from the liberal VVD today, I assume. She's working on 'interoperability'. Some years before ('96), the less famous (*) Dutch Euro-commissioner Frits Bolkestein - coincidentally(?) from that very same party VVD passed the EUCD, the European variant of the DCMA (EUCD is even worse it seems), that prevents the very same interoperability. Yes, something is wrong in our universe I guess. Or is it just politics? *Only in NL it's the other way around I guess. |
| caitlyn May 27, 2009 6:00 PM EDT |
What's wrong with our politics is that it takes significant money to win elections which in turn comes from the well heeled and large corporate interests who in turn have an interest in generating and protecting corporate wealth. Add politicians who don't understand the issues involved and who are more than willing to listen to their corporate masters and you get DMCA and EUCD. |
| hkwint May 27, 2009 6:58 PM EDT |
Quoting:which in turn comes from the well heeled and large corporate interests That's an issue which has been successfully resolved in one occasion before (at least here in Europe); when SMB's were organized to influence the very same politicians. That was probably the only reason the community-patent (which would make software patents in the EU enforceable) didn't make it. However, sadly that SMB-organization didn't exist back in 1996. Things are slightly progressing however. Some left-parties - at least the Dutch ones - promised not to talk to unregistered lobbyists anymore. A lot of people closely scrutinize new copyright-extending software - though copyright extension to 70 years sadly did make it nonetheless. But at least awareness by the general public and SMB slowly increases. The problem here is that the ordinary civilians don't have lobbyists working for them. Politicians are supposed to be just that - lobbyists of civilians - they are even paid by them, but still don't lobby for them. Quoting:Add politicians who don't understand the issues involved Sad thing is, they do understand the legal issues involved because there's a vast amount of lawyers & co at least in the European Parliament and I guess it's the same for parliaments abroad. Programmers on the other hand, or other people who understand the technical aspects... Nope, not in our parliament. You should be happy to find two engineers in a parliament of 150 (that's the case in our country). I guess we - as the voters - should ask for programmers to be added to join political parties, but on the other hand, which programmer would be stupid enough to join the quicksand that's called politics & international law? |
| krisum May 28, 2009 3:53 AM EDT |
@NoDough Do you mean the pdfimport extension or the PDF import capabilities of new OO. I have tried PDF import in OpenOffice 3.1 and that opened in OO draw which was of poor quality. Also does adding comments and saving as PDF result in PDF comments that can be opened in other PDF readers, or can it only be opened in OO? edit: Ok, was a bit confused; there is no native PDF import in OO3 yet. I had the pdfimport extension installed which was opening the PDF, but it messes up formatting and layout. Further it cannot add PDF comments readable by other readers as PDF comments. So it has still quite some way to go. Meanwhile PDF-XChange viewer works for me and can add PDF comments in a document wonderfully well. |
| NoDough May 29, 2009 11:10 AM EDT |
>> I have tried PDF import in OpenOffice 3.1 and that opened in OO draw which was of poor quality. Yes, it opened in OO Draw. But I had no trouble with quality. >> Also does adding comments and saving as PDF result in PDF comments that can be opened in other PDF readers, or can it only be opened in OO? Haven't tried to open them in other editors, so I cannot say. >> ...but it messes up formatting and layout. I had this problem with a couple of my PDFs conatining vector graphics. I printed them to a PDF printer and re-opened them without the problem. |
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