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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.
- 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]
 vs. 
Also see: Adobe's list of items fixed in 6.0.1.
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