Talk:Adobe Acrobat

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Contents 1 Info added 2 PDF Writer 3 Criticism section 4 Screenshot 5 Alt-Tab 6 Inappropriate tone 7 Controversy section 8 ITS SLOWWWW 9 Removed disk space information

[edit] Info added

Added info on the just released Acrobat 3D Blade 19:06, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] PDF Writer

As someone who used to support Acrobat 5 I can tell you for a fact that PDFWriter did exist on the Mac it was however an optional component (as it was on Windows). Acrobat 6 was the first version to not have the PDF Writer anymore on Mac/Windows --Skuld-Chan 04:06, 3 September 2006 (UTC) .

With respect, I must disagree. That isn't at all how I remember it. But, in the style of Wikipedia, what is really needed is for one of us to find a source to back up our assertions. Notinasnaid 07:33, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I've found one, and reinstated the text. Perhaps you were seeing PDFWriter left over from a previous installation of Acrobat 4.0. Notinasnaid 07:45, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism section

I've deleted the section Criticism, which ran like this:

Adobe Reader has been criticized in blogs and user reviews on websites such as CNET. Some users feel that it is "bloatware" which takes up an excessive amount of system resources. Many users also dislike that it tries to install the Yahoo! Toolbar and other third party software even if the user does not want it to. It does this both at instalation and when automatically updating. A good example of this criticism can be found in the CNET editor's review of the rival Foxit Reader - "To put it gently, Acrobat Reader is a real pain in the hindquarters. It's monstrously large, slow to load, and includes many features that most users will hardly ever need." [1] Less resource draining alternatives to Acrobat are available, such as Foxit Reader and eXPert PDF Reader, both of which are free. [2] [3]

The reason is not to deny that these criticms exist (though "user reviews" and "blogs" are not especially reliable as sources). The reason to remove it is that the actual link given [4] doesn't support the assertion. The review says many things but includes a few lines after the quoted portion "Unfortunately, Foxit PDF Reader has one considerable flaw: it hogs a huge amount of system memory. In our tests, it took up 210MB, compared to 21MB for Acrobat with the same documents". So, I don't think anyone could describe Foxit Reader as "less resource draining" on the basis of that source, memory being a crucial resource (and people generally have less of it than other things like hard disks). I looked into rewriting it but I couldn't really do that in a way that left the meaning intact. I think the whole section has to go, for now, and be rewritten from a more neutral perspective. The writing should also make it clear that this is not a general criticm of the Acrobat family, just the Adobe Reader, if that is the case. Notinasnaid 15:38, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Its the same idea with explorer and firefox explorer.exe runs less then firefox.exe but i still prefer firefox regardless foxit is a smaller download and a faster startup and on my computer i notice little to no difference runing foxit is more then internet explorer yet less then firefox by like 30,000k Atomic1fire 07:11, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Screenshot

I changed the previous screenshot to one I took, the main two differences are that my screenshot was taken on a Mac, and is in .PNG as opposed to the previous which was a JPEG and had quality issues. BadCRC 21:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

That's really nice! However - you must remember to change the screenshot caption - to "Mac OS X" also... –- kungming·2 | ^(Talk·^Contact) 03:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

whoops, I never thought about that, also realized there is an actual issue with the screenshot, the menubar is for Safari, not Adobe Acrobat. I'll try to make another screenshot today or tommorow. 70.25.192.77 15:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

that was me BadCRC 15:03, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alt-Tab

Does anyone know of any fix to the annoying, completely broken Alt-Tab behavior of Adobe Reader 7? I'm talking about the fact that Adobe keeps an entry in the Alt-Tab list for itself, and then for each and every open document, so if you Alt-Tab to the document icon (and not to the Adobe icon) and then try to Alt-Tab out of it, you get back to the same document, and you need to do Alt-Tab-Tab to actually move to the next document / application. Is there a setting somewhere in the application to change it? Or should it be reported as a bug to the developers (if so, where to report it?) Drst 17:30, 12 June 2006 (CET+1)

[edit] Inappropriate tone

The article was just tagged (by an anonymous IP, without comment here) using the tag which generates

Personally, I don't see much wrong with the tone. If I don't see any feedback in a few weeks, I'll treat this as a "hit and run" and take the tag off again. Anyone? Notinasnaid 17:10, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I would agree that there isn't much wrong with the tone in general right now. You can probably remove the tag. There were some vague statements before such as "It is mostly described in those two articles" which I removed. Anyways, there should definitely be some references added esp. for an article of this size. Parnell88 06:46, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Removed. Sources are an interesting question. How to refer to primary sources which are a pile of software boxes, and the software products themselves? Notinasnaid 09:40, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I have an issue with the line "Purists and pedants dislike these made-up names." Do we really need this? It could be said about many things, so "it goes without saying". Connectionfailure 00:25, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Controversy section

I dropped a lack of POV warning on this section. I think it's a stretch as worded (both the topic and the idea it's a 'controversy'). It'd be better served as part of a section on security issues with a less accusational tone, maybe. (And it's incorrect - Acrobat has supported JavaScript since version 6 at least.)Blade 00:23, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually 3.02, as the article already said! Notinasnaid 09:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ITS SLOWWWW

We all know its slow. Its a fact its slow. Almost everyone agrees its slow. Why cant we keep the criticisms section with a reference to the slowness of it? Its painfully true that many users require hackarounds to speed it up a bit and thats worth noting. The Javascript is even less well publicised, so it baffles me why you keep removing the speed issue.... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.127.73.46 (talk • contribs).

I think the issue is not that the article states that it is slow or that people workaround it. Rather, it's how the issue is being addressed in the included text. The statement is unsourced, consists of weasel words and comes off as someone who has a personal bone to pick (check out the page on NPOV, especially WP:NPOV#Attributing_and_substantiating_biased_statements). It also adds two links that actually refer to the same freeware utility make it seem like advertising spam. We've hit the 3-edit-a-day limit, but I suggest it be reformulated with the guidelines above or it will probably be removed again. Blade 02:38, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

That covers it pretty well. Let's give an example in a different field.

Suppose you know that Ronald Fiction (a fictional politician) is an idiot. All your friends agree. Can you put "Ronald Fiction is an idiot" in an article. No: pure opinion. How about "Many people agree Ronald Fiction is an idiot". Still no, this time weasel words are trying to disguise that it's pure opinion. Ok, how about "A blog entry (link) says Ronald Fiction is an idiot". We now have a source, but it isn't acceptable by Wikipedia standards: anyone can have a blog and say anything.

But how about "Brian Angry, writing a column in the Metropolis Bugle on 2 February 2007 (link) described Ronald Fiction as an idiot." Now we are in better territory. There are still issues of balance. For example, suppose the article actually said "Ronald Fiction and his entire party are all idiots". Presenting this as about just the one man is not objective. Or suppose the article says "Ronald Fiction was an idiot when he voted for this bill, but mostly he's sensible"; again, selective quoting makes this look worse than it is. Equally, including a whole lot of bad quotes and no good ones is off balance. We should also consider who Brian Angry actually is. Is he an opposing politician, or a columnist who calls a different person an idiot each week? This is relevant to his criticism.

Equally, it would be no good to say "Ronald Fiction is an idiot, as Brian Angry, writing a column..." This clearly shows the editor's opinion: you should never be able to tell an editor's own opinion from what they write in Wikipedia.

Now, let's come back to this specific issue. You wrote, most recently "Many consider the software to be quite slow to load and use. Several work around solutions to speed the software up are available on the internet." and used as a source http://underscorebleach.net/jotsheet/2005/01/fix-adobe-acrobat-pdf-problems. The problems here include

1. Weasel words, as noted.

2. You say "the software". What software? As the article explains, Acrobat is a huge family of products, but the source refers only to Adobe Reader. (To confuse things, some sources might not understand the difference either; frankly, this would damage their credibility).

3. The source itself and use of it

(a) it seems to be a blog

(b) he writes "basically I want to urinate on the entire PDF standard". Is this an objective source?

(c) he also writes "If you have Adobe Reader 6, upgrade to 7. It’s actually less bloated". This seems to be an acknowledgement that Adobe have addressed what he sees as a problem. You didn't acknowledge this in the Wikipedia lines you wrote.

I don't think it should be impossible to find a suitable source saying this, and make a suitable entry in the article. It has been said a bit over the years, I agree, though perhaps not as much as you think, and (from my perspective) rather less with recent releases. (Criticisms of old releases are not automatically disqualified, of course: Wikipedia is about the entire history of the product).

I hope this helps. Notinasnaid 09:27, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, another editor has added this text There have been a number of people who consider the software to be too slow to load and use that they have developed work around solutions to speed up the software.[5][6] . This is better, but it seems that "a number" may still be weasel words. Also, this fails to include the point, included in one of the sources, that Adobe themselves made it better. Comments? Notinasnaid 16:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok I changed the wording of that a bit, as it seemed a bit orkward...not much...And added a link to a quote from adobe claiming version 7 is 50% faster, and also a link to a 3rd party developer who claims there software is faster and better and advertises it as such with direct comparisons to adobe

Hope thats better —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.127.73.46 (talk) 10:56, 6 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Removed disk space information

I removed the following disk space information. From "Version 5": Removed "Uses ~12MB of disk space when installed (according to Windows XP's Add/Remove programs)." From "Version 8": "Uses ~150MB when installed (according to Windows XP's Add/Remove programs)" The reason for removing this is that it doesn't seem to relate to the article. As the article explains the family for Acrobat 5 included Acrobat, Acrobat Reader, Acrobat Elements, Acrobat Distiller Server. Acrobat 6 included Acrobat Professional, Acrobat Standard, Acrobat Elements, Adobe Reader, Acrobat 3D and many more. If the commentary is on one particular product in the family, it belongs (if anywhere) clearly tagged to the product. There is already enough confusion with users who think Acrobat is just a synonym for the free Acrobat Reader/Adobe Reader. This also gets into presuming that Windows is the only system out there - what about Macintosh, Linux and various Unix systems? Comments please. Notinasnaid 17:45, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Notinasnaid. Very valid point. In fact, Acrobat Reader 5.0 uses ~8MB disk space, whereas Acrobat Reader 5.1 uses ~12MB disk space, so it can vary significantly between versions, and it's also important that it's clear which product is being referred to. I think the point I was attempting to make was how Acrobat Reader has grown gradually and significantly during it's product lifetime so far, and interestingly with little indication of why given things such as the lack of documented feature differences between 5.0 and 5.1, for example. --Rebroad 19:54, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

As a matter of interest I can perhaps explain the size difference between 5.0 and 5.1. 5.1 was the first to support Reader Extensions, which is a method of allowing specially privileged PDF files to do things that otherwise only Acrobat can do (such as save a filled in form, do a signature, or execute extra JavaScript.) This meant that a lot of extra functions were moved into Acrobat Reader, even though they were not in general visible or accessible unless someone had one of these special PDF files (which were created by people like the IRS). (From memory, not sourced). Notinasnaid 21:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)