I like the concept of open source programs, but sometimes they just don't work as well as free non-opensource commercial programs.
With Evince some pdf documents don't render properly. There are other usability issues. Perhaps someday Evince will be better than Adobe Acrobat. I hope so. For now I must use Acrobat because Evince will not always do the job required.
For example at the time of this memo, Evince will not properly display this document: http://www.state.tn.us/sos/forms/corpfeeschedules.pdf
For this reason I changed the default pdf file reader in Firefox on Ubuntu. It took some time and research to make the change. You may know a better way. If you do, please share it with me. I am writing this memo to help others make the change easier in the only way I could find. Once you discover the formula it seems simple but incomplete because it does not work in Ubuntu without a an extra click.
1. First you must install the Adobe Acrobat reader. I already had the Acrobat reader installed through Automatix. There are probably many ways to install the reader. It did not show up in my Synaptic Package Manager. Adding another repository might have changed that, but I did not need to expore as I already had Acrobat. You are on your own in acquiring Adobe Acrobat. You can probably go to the Adobe Acrobat Web site or to the Automatix web site if you are using Ubuntu or another Debian derivative and easily get Adobe Acrobat reader.
2. Locate the path to Acrobat. I did this by looking at the “Properties” of the Acrobat Icon. The system "Applications" menu did not disclose "Properties" on a right click. To get at the properties of the icon I found Acrobat in the "Applications" menu for Ubuntu under the Office submenu item. Right clicking would not disclosed the properties so I created an icon on the desktop by right clicking the icon in the Office submenu of Applications and selecting “Add this launcher to the desktop”. The “Launcher” tab has the path to the launcher distinguished by the title “Command”. I discovered the path to be “/opt/automatix/acrobatreader/Adobe/Reader8/bin/acroread”. It may be different on your computer.
3. Save a pdf file to your desktop or any other accessible location. Right click on the file icon. Select “Open with Other Application” instead of the default “Open with Document Viewer”. I did not see Acrobat in the list of applications and was forced to click “Use custom command” and navigate along the path to the location of the “acroread” executable file. A small check box was available to always use this file with this application which I clicked. Later I went back through the process to write this synopsis but the check box no longer appeared. This is probably because it had already been selected and would have resulted in an unnecessary option. I found this method in an email from Aysiu in the Ubuntu forum. Apparently in his setup Acrobat was listed as a program option and he was not forced to do it by tracing the path.
4. This process made Acrobat the default reader for pdf files in Firefox, but did not do so for pdf files in general on Ubuntu. It did not work at all in Thunderbird which saw only the default. It did give you an easy route to Acrobat by right clicking the pdf file and selecting the second option of Acrobat in some other locations. The first option and default remained “Document Viewer”. This prompted a search for changing the Ubuntu default application for pdf files.
5. Changing the default application in Ubuntu is much more difficult than doing the same in Windows. The instructions were at http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~djm/ubuntu/gutsy/#acroread . There were several confusing steps. One was that the name of the "desktop entry" which did not follow the exact format in the instructions. The Acrobat file had a somewhat different name, but it still worked. The default application for pdf files was changed in all applications. There are so many versions of Windows that I gave up trying to keep up with how they worked after Windows 2000, but in that version, and prior, changing the default application took only one entry in Windows Explorer. As I am new to Linux I felt like a brain surgeon after dealing with the complexities of changing a default application in Ubuntu. I hope there is an easier way.
There must be better ways to accomplish this task. If so, please email me at Jim at-sign Jim-Fuqua.com and I will revise or supplement the instructions.
Likewise this information will become obsolete. If so, please email me at the same email address so that I can delete this information.
Jim Fuqua
3 December 2007
