Reading PDF - a cry for help

[Richmond Mathewson]

On 09/30/2011 04:21 PM, Admin wrote:
>
>
> I like that. pdf works everywhere (except that dark corner of
> windows) - oh, you mean the 98% of all computer users dark corner? Oops,
> forgot about them.
>
> Mike
>
>
As our house is completely non-Windows [mixed Mac, Ubuntu-Linux, 
Mint-Linux],
and my wife has to print out her handouts at the University of Plovdiv 
[100% Windows];
as most of her stuff contains  an Anglo-Saxon-cum-Middle-English font 
made by me, she is
ALWAYS very careful to pump out her finished work as PDF files, stick 
them on the flash drive, and wander up the road to the Uni' . . .

. . . Safe in the knowledge that PDF is the ONLY format that works 
cross-platform [i.e. Mac + Windows + Linux] every single time.

So remarks about "dark corners" don't really make much sense. Certainly, 
the installs of
Windows XP at the University of Plovdiv have no problem at all printing 
out whatever we can
throw at them from our "alien" operating systems.

I do know that Adobe's PDF reader does not always "sit prettily" with 
Windows, and I tend to install Foxit for my friends:

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/

I don't like Windows, but the fact is that hereabouts (at least) 99% of 
the place uses Windows,
and, on the whole, seem to manage remarkably well. The fact that I don't 
like Windows has not stopped me installing it and tweaking it for people 
who would prefer it to other operating systems; the only thing they have 
had to put up with is a 20 minute anti-Windows rant from me first . . .  
:) Actually fairly cheap as the going rate for a windows install round 
here (I mean the act of installing, not the licence) is currently 
running at about 50 Euros).

My main grump about Windows boils down to 3 things:

1. I can run Pentium 2,3 & 4 machines much faster and more efficiently 
on types of Linux
     than on Windows 98 and XP.

2. Kids who turn up with written work on Flash drives from there home 
systems are not going to virus my machines and ruin my weekend by having 
to reinstall everything for the 95th time.

3. I'd rather spend my money on things I see as more directly relevant 
to my work, such as
specialist learner keyboards, educational DVDs and so forth, than a 
plain bread-and-butter OS to underpin the work.

I used to be anti-PDF because it is not Open Source; but then, Hey, nor 
is Livecode. And
Open Source (sorry, Shri Shri Richard Stallman) is NOT a virtue in and 
of itself; and, having
gone to a talk by R. Stallman, I got turned off his shrill, one-sided, 
rather bigotted rantings.

And, however much I like Open Source, I cannot see a viable alternative 
to PDF right now.