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Acrobat 6-8 Issues | Miscellaneous
Acrobat 6-8 Issues
- The internal name of the Search action
was changed in Acrobat/Reader 6 from /AcroSrch:Query to /FindSearch.
[Fixed in Reader 8.1]
Acrobat/Reader 6 and 7, however, still recognized the previous
name; Acrobat/Reader 8 no longer do. The action is executed in
Acrobat 8.0 (but is not reported properly in dialog boxes),
and causes a crash in Reader 8.0.
- Acrobat Distiller 7.0.x: FrameMaker's
rounded rectangles are warped when distilled with the "Convert
smooth lines to curves" option (Advanced tab, turned on
by default in the "Standard" and "Smallest file
size" options) [example]. This has to do with the way FrameMaker
outputs its graphic objects to PostScript, splitting basic shapes
into multiple segments. [Fixed in Distiller 8.1]

- Acrobat and Reader 7 have a preference
of "Automatically detect URLs from text" (Edit >
Preferences, General; turned on by default). Web links and e-mail
addresses present in the text are interpreted as links when the
PDF is displayed in Acrobat/Reader 7. Acrobat's interpretation
of text-based web addresses may be problematic when the URL is
split between lines, or when the "underlying" text
is not recognized properly. In the case of e-mail addresses,
the presence of a dot, an underscores or a hyphen also causes
a problem in the interpretation (so John.Doe@company.com is interpreted
as Doe@company.com).
Web links that are detected automatically only show the hand
icon (without a 'w'), and do not trigger a security warning ("The
document is trying to connect to the site: http://..... If you
trust the site click 'Allow', otherwise click 'Block'.").
Reader 8.0: When the PDF is displayed in Reader 8.0, dot/underscore/hyphen
present in an e-mail address does not truncate the detected address.
- Acrobat/Reader 7.0, Windows XP/2000 computers
where Hebrew or Arabic are specified under Regional and Language
Options, Advanced tab ("select a language to match the language
version of the non-Unicode programs you want to use" field),
all text fields and items in lists/combo boxes are right-aligned.
In the case of scrolling lists, text items are right-aligned
[AVI] with
the vertical scroller to the extent of being hidden on-screen
(but the printed form is OK). The forms function as expected
with earlier releases of Acrobat/Reader. The same right-alignment
problem applies to text included with the "Drawing Mark-Up"
tools (call-out tool, text box tool).
[Fixed in Acrobat/Reader 7.0.5]
- Cross-file links/bookmarks take you to the default opening page of the target
PDF (typically page 1), and not to the specified page/destinations,
unless the target PDF is already open or is opened in a new window
-- this can be done by changing the "open cross-document
links in same window" local preference (or by setting a
"New Window" property for cross-file links). Control-clicking
a cross-file link will also cause the target file to open in
a new window, with the target destination display.
[Fixed in Acrobat/Reader 6.0.1]
- Question:
"Is there a way to prevent the display of advertisements
in the toolbar of Reader"?
Yes! Edit > Preferences, "Startup" section, uncheck
"Show Messages and automatically update"
- Acrobat/Reader 7.0x do no show page labels
when dragging the vertical scrolling bar (PDFs displayed in a
single-page mode).

- Distiller 6 and higher do not validate
internal named destinations.
Previous versions of Distiller issue the following warning in
the case of missing internal destinations (eg used by links/bookmarks):
% [ Warning: The following Names in Name Tree Dests were
not defined ] %
(PS
file, 1K)
- Page transitions (save examples & open in Acrobat/Reader;
PDF page transitions are not displayed in web browsers)
- Page transitions are displayed only in
full-screen mode (MS Windows); previous Acrobat versions display
page transitions in other modes as long as the page is displayed
in a "single page" layout -- see example (PDF, 9KB).
- Some page transitions are displayed very
slowly compared to the display in previous Acrobat versions --
see example
(PDF, 1212KB).
- Line thickness display is generally improved in Acrobat 6.0, but the
results still vary depending on the techniques used by applications/drivers
to draw lines in PostScript/PDF, so that you may or may not be
able to benefit from the improvements. A hand-coded example (PDF, 23KB,
produced by Distiller 6.0) demonstrates
common ways in which lines are drawn by applications and their
impact on the display. Inspect different page areas of the example
at various zoom levels, and with "smooth line art"
turned on and off [Edit > Preferences > General; "smoothing"
(Acrobat 6) or "display" (Acrobat 5)]. Problems may
be noticeable only in sections of the page or only with certain
magnifications.
- Search:
- Acrobat/Reader 6.0.1/6.0.2, Windows/XP:
Current search string may be displayed
improperly [AVI] when starting a new search [Fixed in Acrobat/Reader 7]
- The Search panel takes up a lot of screen
real estate and cannot move or float. In Acrobat/Reader 6, it
cannot be resized when needed so items may are sometimes truncated
in the Results box. In Acrobat/Reader 7, it is possible to enlarge
the panel but this is pretty useless, as text boxes and fields
are not resized accordingly.
[Search panel can float in Acrobat/Reader 8]
- Search results for items used infrequently
are displayed only when the entire search operation is completed,
which may take some time in longer documents (when a document
is searched for the first time; you can Purge Cache Contents
in Preference>Search if the document was already searched).
Example: open the PDF Reference manual and search for Morisawa
(which appears on page 2).
- Proximity option is disabled unless "Match
All of the words" is selected.
- Search results cannot be sorted by field
(eg Title, subject, keywords, producer).
- Cannot display search results by title
instead of by file name (when searching multiple PDFs).
- Info button (or equivalent), letting
you see all standard fields for a given item in the Results box,
is missing.
- Custom fields are not "remembered"
when starting a new search.
- Custom fields of a numeric type cannot
be searched (eg search for all documents that have a Grade value
larger than 85).
- Boxes or odd-looking characters may be
displayed in the words of context that appear around each instance
of the search string instead of various symbols -- see example (PDF, 27KB).
- Page numbers in the tool tips for search
results relate to the physical/sequential numbers in the PDF,
not to the actual page numbers ("page labels").
- Full-text search indexes produced by Acrobat Catalog 6-7 cannot be used
in Acrobat/Reader 5 or earlier.
Windows Acrobat/Reader 5 users trying to access the index
created by higher versions Catalog get a message that it is not
a valid index; Windows Acrobat/Reader 6 or 7 can handle indexes
created by Catalog 5. [In versions 6 and 7, Acrobat Catalog is
part of Acrobat Professional, but not included in the Standard
version]
Macintosh Acrobat/Reader 6 cannot open full-text search
indexes produced by earlier versions of Acrobat Catalog because
the third-party search engine technology used prior to Acrobat
6 is not available for Mac OSX.
- PDF
Optimizer, "Remove Unused Named Destinations" function
still risky! (Acrobat 6)
When selecting Advanced > PDF Optimizer > Clean Up (in
Acrobat 5: Tools > PDF Consultant > Optimize Space), the
"Remove Unused Named Destinations" is turned on by
default. Yet this operation is not fully aware of Acrobat capabilities
which may utilize named destinations, and can make a wrong judgment
as to which destinations are not used. Named destinations which
are identified as being "unused" are deleted (damaging
the functions which use them), including destinations which are
exclusively used by links in other PDFs or in web pages, named
destinations used in JavaScript functions (eg popup menus) or
a named destination used as a default opening view.
No warning is issued when activating this function as to the
possible effect on interactive features. To experiment, use this
example (PDF,
11KB) .
[In Acrobat Professional 7, "Remove
unreferenced named destinations" is turned off by default]
- In Acrobat/Reader 6 and later, the bookmark
panel does not consistently show the currently viewed section
in the document (through an emphasized page-like icon); collapsed
parent bookmarks are not displayed differently to indicate that
one of the subordinate bookmarks corresponds to the currently-viewed
page.
- In Acrobat/Reader 6, File >
Exit named action is interpreted as File >
Close . [Fixed in Acrobat/Reader 7]
- Some security settings are interpreted differently in Acrobat 6. In Acrobat/Reader
5, the "Changes Allowed: None" setting did not prevent
pop-ups from being displayed/hidden; in Acrobat/Reader 6.0, a
"Changes Allowed: Filling in form fields and signing"
is required.
- Question:
"how do I get rid of those huge icons next to each bookmark
in Acrobat 6 or at least reduce the space between bookmarks?"
[Note: Acrobat/Reader 6 and 7 let you change the size of the
text in the bookmarks, but this doesn't close up the space or
make the icons smaller]
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