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#1 2008-05-16 12:51:30

Spider.007
Member
Registered: 2004-06-20
Posts: 1,175

what happened to the acroread package?

it seems to have disappeared from the package-servers as well as ABS?

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#2 2008-05-16 12:54:09

Pierre
Developer
From: Bonn
Registered: 2004-07-05
Posts: 1,964
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

We are not allowd to distribute it. A PKGBUILD can be found in AUR.

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#3 2008-05-16 14:03:36

Spider.007
Member
Registered: 2004-06-20
Posts: 1,175

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

Hmm; okay, thanks!

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#4 2008-05-16 15:15:24

Cerebral
Forum Fellow
From: Waterloo, ON, CA
Registered: 2005-04-08
Posts: 3,108
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

We had a horrible breakup - acroread kept demanding and demanding, but never giving back.  In the end, we ended up doing all the work while acroread just sat around and watched TV all day; we felt under-appreciated and used.

It all came to a head a few days ago, and we had a great argument.  While we were watching TV, acroread insisted that we "get off our lazy asses and do some work" and that's when we snapped.  We yelled at each other all night, and didn't get any sleep.  It ended with us telling acroread to leave - it was no longer welcome here. 

Some of us still miss acroread, but it's not coming back.  It's out of our lives, and we're the better for it, rebuilding our broken hearts trying to find love again.

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#5 2008-05-16 16:18:15

Demind
Member
Registered: 2007-07-10
Posts: 111

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

I really don't understand why you should use acroread when there are some many other good solutions like epdfviewer, kpdf or others...

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#6 2008-05-16 16:18:38

finferflu
Forum Fellow
From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2007-06-21
Posts: 1,899
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

Cerebral wrote:

We had a horrible breakup - acroread kept demanding and demanding, but never giving back.  In the end, we ended up doing all the work while acroread just sat around and watched TV all day; we felt under-appreciated and used.

It all came to a head a few days ago, and we had a great argument.  While we were watching TV, acroread insisted that we "get off our lazy asses and do some work" and that's when we snapped.  We yelled at each other all night, and didn't get any sleep.  It ended with us telling acroread to leave - it was no longer welcome here. 

Some of us still miss acroread, but it's not coming back.  It's out of our lives, and we're the better for it, rebuilding our broken hearts trying to find love again.

lol

You can get a pacman package from this mirror if you want (until its disappearance).

@ Demind
I agree with you, however some may prefer to have PDFs embedded into Firefox (which works only with Acrobad Reader, as long as I know).


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#7 2008-05-16 16:23:58

Allan
Pacman
From: Brisbane, AU
Registered: 2007-06-09
Posts: 11,365
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

finferflu wrote:

however some may prefer to have PDFs embedded into Firefox (which works only with Acrobad Reader, as long as I know).

The is a mozilla plugin called mozembeder (or something like that) that can embed other pdf readers in firefox.

Personally, I need acrobat reader for filling in some pdf forms that don't work properly anywhere else.  Adobe seems to have some extensions to the pdf spec in its software...

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#8 2008-05-16 16:26:05

finferflu
Forum Fellow
From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2007-06-21
Posts: 1,899
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

Thanks for the information Allan, that might come handy smile


Have you Syued today?
Free music for free people! | Earthlings

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- A. de Saint-Exupery

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#9 2008-05-16 16:43:58

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

Yeah, the gist is: there license has no leeway when it comes to distribution - you are simply not allowed to get this app from anywhere else except adobe. Additionally, there are much better readers out there (go go xpdf!)

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#10 2008-05-16 16:51:26

Pierre
Developer
From: Bonn
Registered: 2004-07-05
Posts: 1,964
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

I bet there'll be more complaints when we'll have removed adobe's flashplugin :-)

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#11 2008-05-16 16:55:33

byte
Member
From: Düsseldorf (DE)
Registered: 2006-05-01
Posts: 2,046

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

Removing Flash? Nooo! That would ruin my IRC experience... what's #archlinux without MrElendig's YouTube links?!


1000

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#12 2008-05-16 16:59:51

kensai
Member
From: Puerto Rico
Registered: 2005-06-03
Posts: 2,484
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

finferflu wrote:

@ Demind
I agree with you, however some may prefer to have PDFs embedded into Firefox (which works only with Acrobad Reader, as long as I know).

No kidding? People like having such a bloated piece of software embedded in firefox, which makes firefox freeze for a moment and then crash sometimes? WOW, people are crazy this days.

For all the crazy people that want that, please, instead use this add on.


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#13 2008-05-16 17:14:26

skottish
Forum Fellow
From: Here
Registered: 2006-06-16
Posts: 7,942

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

Allan wrote:

Personally, I need acrobat reader for filling in some pdf forms that don't work properly anywhere else.  Adobe seems to have some extensions to the pdf spec in its software...

Evince is making vast improvements in this area. It's still not able to do everything Acrobat can do, but it's getting a lot better.

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#14 2008-05-16 19:22:53

carlocci
Member
From: Padova - Italy
Registered: 2008-02-12
Posts: 368

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

phrakture wrote:

Yeah, the gist is: there license has no leeway when it comes to distribution - you are simply not allowed to get this app from anywhere else except adobe. Additionally, there are much better readers out there (go go xpdf!)

Why did it disappear from abs then?
Or abs only list packages that are available as binary packages?

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#15 2008-05-16 19:32:55

Cerebral
Forum Fellow
From: Waterloo, ON, CA
Registered: 2005-04-08
Posts: 3,108
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

carlocci wrote:

Or abs only list packages that are available as binary packages?

ABS grabs PKGBUILDs for all packages available in our binary repos (core, extra, community, unstable, testing), yes.

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#16 2008-06-15 22:42:19

LnxArch
Member
Registered: 2007-06-29
Posts: 28

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

You can't possible compare xpdf or epdfview with Adobe Reader. Altough i use xpdf, it's very limited, you cant copy paste text for instance... It's such a waste to see good software like this disappear


Penguins do it better

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#17 2008-06-16 01:52:03

shazeal
Member
From: New Zealand
Registered: 2007-06-05
Posts: 341

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

Just use evince it can copy and paste and its not as craptastic as adobe but we have to make sacrfices sometimes... wait no we dont, use evince!

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#18 2008-06-16 03:36:48

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

LnxArch wrote:

You can't possible compare xpdf or epdfview with Adobe Reader. Altough i use xpdf, it's very limited, you cant copy paste text for instance... It's such a waste to see good software like this disappear

I don't know, one less bloatware app in the repos seems good too me.

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#19 2008-06-18 21:16:21

LnxArch
Member
Registered: 2007-06-29
Posts: 28

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

iBertus wrote:
LnxArch wrote:

You can't possible compare xpdf or epdfview with Adobe Reader. Altough i use xpdf, it's very limited, you cant copy paste text for instance... It's such a waste to see good software like this disappear

I don't know, one less bloatware app in the repos seems good too me.

It's not a performance issue, it's a matter of compatibility, some pfd's don't "appear" (render) so well in evince or xpdf. If evince has copy paste, then i shall give it a try


Penguins do it better

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#20 2008-06-18 22:18:48

gazj
Member
From: /home/gazj -> /uk/cambs
Registered: 2007-02-09
Posts: 681
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

kpdf works great for me, not very gtk friendly tho, sorry

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#21 2008-08-08 19:58:06

ConnorBehan
Package Maintainer (PM)
From: Long Island NY
Registered: 2007-07-05
Posts: 1,359
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

I have only used acroread once on this computer - to verify that a file had DRM by trying to copy it using acroread and failing. I then deleted acroread and installed evince which was able to copy it, thus proving that evince was DRM free. All ghostscript based viewers, epdfview and kpdf are DRM free but NOT xpdf. I've never had to use acroread since, but I'll admit that whenever 3rd party viewers get feature parity with acroread, Adobe tries to stay one step ahead (like with their 3D animated PDFs or whatever).

Did adobe change the license recently? Or were you violating the license this whole time hoping they wouldn't notice? I haven't used any other Linux distros in awhile, so am I to assume that they all dropped acroread from their binary repos as well? (At least the ones they officially support?) Incidentally flash says the same thing:

/usr/share/licenses/flashplugin-beta/LICENSE wrote:

You may not make or distribute copies of the Software, or electronically transfer the Software from one computer to another or over a network.

However, you can apply for a license to distribute Adobe software in binary form. http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/distribute.html I think they always accept. For example I have a license to distribute Shockwave Player on Linux (even though it doesn't even exist for Linux). This was part of my feeble attempt to convince them to port it which they still haven't.

Confining all packages like these to the AUR wouldn't harm anyone. New users may back away from using a PKGBUILD to compile an install a complex program from source, but using a PKGBUILD to download a binary blob from Adobe is a piece of cake.

There's only one package containing (I think) proprietary software that I'd really like to stay in extra: codecs. They are from the mplayer site but is mplayer even allowed to distribute them? They look like DLLs that you have to get by buying windows. I'm not even sure how Linux media players can load them, do they have an emulation layer inside them? Being able to decode everything is a must for interoperability. If someone tried to get these codecs taken down from every site, what would you have to do? Setup a mirror in some country which is not involved in any copyright treaties? (Western Sahara comes to mind)


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#22 2008-08-09 04:44:21

Snowman
Developer/Forum Fellow
From: Montreal, Canada
Registered: 2004-08-20
Posts: 5,212

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

ConnorBehan wrote:

I have only used acroread once on this computer - to verify that a file had DRM by trying to copy it using acroread and failing. I then deleted acroread and installed evince which was able to copy it, thus proving that evince was DRM free. All ghostscript based viewers, epdfview and kpdf are DRM free but NOT xpdf. I've never had to use acroread since, but I'll admit that whenever 3rd party viewers get feature parity with acroread, Adobe tries to stay one step ahead (like with their 3D animated PDFs or whatever).

Did adobe change the license recently? Or were you violating the license this whole time hoping they wouldn't notice? I haven't used any other Linux distros in awhile, so am I to assume that they all dropped acroread from their binary repos as well?

The license that was included in the package was an old one. So Adobe changed their license at some point.

ConnorBehan wrote:
/usr/share/licenses/flashplugin-beta/LICENSE wrote:

You may not make or distribute copies of the Software, or electronically transfer the Software from one computer to another or over a network.

However, you can apply for a license to distribute Adobe software in binary form. http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/distribute.html I think they always accept. For example I have a license to distribute Shockwave Player on Linux (even though it doesn't even exist for Linux). This was part of my feeble attempt to convince them to port it which they still haven't.

The license application that you linked doesn't suit Arch:

Complete and submit the Adobe Reader Distribution Agreement. The Reader Distribution Agreement is for:

    * Corporations that would like to distribute Adobe Reader on a company intranet site or local network
    * Commercial vendors that would like to include Adobe Reader on CD

The Arch mirrors can't be considered as being an "company intranet site or local network" and we don't want to include it on a CD. Plus there is a clause that prohibit changing or using another packager to install acroread.

ConnorBehan wrote:

Confining all packages like these to the AUR wouldn't harm anyone. New users may back away from using a PKGBUILD to compile an install a complex program from source, but using a PKGBUILD to download a binary blob from Adobe is a piece of cake.

There is already an acroread PKGBUILD in AUR.

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#23 2008-08-09 07:10:41

mentallaxative
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2008-07-14
Posts: 134
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

Allan wrote:
finferflu wrote:

however some may prefer to have PDFs embedded into Firefox (which works only with Acrobad Reader, as long as I know).

The is a mozilla plugin called mozembeder (or something like that) that can embed other pdf readers in firefox.

Personally, I need acrobat reader for filling in some pdf forms that don't work properly anywhere else.  Adobe seems to have some extensions to the pdf spec in its software...

I think you mean Mozplugger--http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=9458. I found it yesterday and it works well with Evince.

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#24 2008-08-09 07:13:03

abhidg
Member
From: City of Kol
Registered: 2006-07-01
Posts: 184
Website

Re: what happened to the acroread package?

I think flashplugin should either be moved to AUR or modified
to directly download from Adobe's site upon installation. At its
current state it doesn't seem to follow the EULA.

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