Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

vtpup · Last edited by vtpup on Tue 01 May 2012, 15:33; edited 1 time in total

Just wondering if anyone has tried to run Adobe Reader X on Wine, since it isn't available in a Unix/Linux version?

I wouldn't ordinarily mind running an earlier native version (and do) but the X version has some features I particularly want.

Those are: the ability to scale and tile the printout as well as putting cut marks in.

Seems like a smaller version of reader, too, not that it is small by comparison with Linux reader apps.

Anyway, has anyone tried it in Wine?

musher0 · Posted: Wed 11 Apr 2012, 13:10 Post subject:

Hello, vtpup.

I won't touch the stuff for reasons of work ethics... It's very over-priced, and large corporations and governments try to impose it on their free-lancers.

But some fellow editors and I have tried PDFXChangeViewer http://www.tracker-software.com/product/downloads. It's not a Linux program, but it works extremely well under wine, and has perhaps more functions than the Adobe Reader. And the basic version is free.

I load PDF's in it through this script (which is not by me; see reference at bottom of script):

disciple · Posted: Wed 11 Apr 2012, 19:24 Post subject:

You might also be interested in Pdfposter, or one of the tools mentioned at http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=450803#450803 (N.B. I'm not sure if Krokus itself supports PDF).

vtpup · Posted: Thu 12 Apr 2012, 22:58 Post subject:

Hello musher0, Thanks very much for answering.

re. the high cost of Adobe Acrobat-- I was actually asking about Adobe Reader which is free.

I'm not asking about writing pdfs (there are many alternatives for that) I'm interested in the specific features of scaling, tiling, and adding cut marks to printouts. I didn't see any of those particular printing capabilities mentioned in the program you suggested, though they do lots of other useful things.

@disciple thanks greatly for those references and thread. Looks like there are some possible solutions there. I have used Posterazor under Wine, and it works fairly well, though nothing as simple and straight forward as the print dialog in Adobe Reader X for scaling and tiling.

FYI I did get Adobe Acrobat Reader to install and run in Wine after a few failed tries -- the main thing I had to do was run the installer from a terminal in the installer directory. It claimed to abort, but the program was effectively installed (without auto deleting) and I was able to run it.

Ironically, the one feature I wanted -- scale and tile -- wasn't functional. In the printout dialog box, there were no boxes to input the scale and tile parameters, though the labels to do that were present. This is probably a Wine version problem, and may yet get fixed down the line.

disciple · Posted: Fri 13 Apr 2012, 04:13 Post subject:

If you report the issue on the Wine bug tracker it might be more likely to get fixed...

I've actually used the Windows version of FoxitReader in the past for scaling a particular part of a pdf by a particular factor; back then Acrobat couldn't do this. But Foxit didn't support automatically printing a poster as separate tiles, like you want. I guess Adobe have for once decided to do something better than someone else!

If you're looking for another convenient option I guess these would be the other possibilities:
- use KDE (apparently Kprinter has this feature).
- import into something like GIMP or Libreoffice, or laidout, which I think have this feature.
- make a gui for pdfposter (people will thank you!)
- add the feature to something like gtklp or gtkpsproc or final page or pdfmod or pdfshuffler or maybe even cups-pdf (I don't think any of them have this feature).
I think I've seen this feature discussed for the standard gtk print system, but I doubt it has been implemented yet.

musher0 · Posted: Fri 13 Apr 2012, 05:41 Post subject:

disciple wrote:
> - import into something like GIMP or Libreoffice, or laidout, which I think have this feature.

This reminds me that Inkscape (not InkscapeLite) can import and process PDF files. I tried it once, and it seemed to treat each PDF page as an image. However I am not a printer, and I don't know if it can do scaling and tiling like you need.

BFN.

irishrm · Joined: 14 Mar 2009 Posts: 182

Have you tried acroread.sfs. Its acrobat reader for puppy. Haven't used it for the purposes that you require but it mentions tiling in one of the drop-down menus.
Acroread can be found here in the forums.

disciple · Posted: Fri 13 Apr 2012, 18:55 Post subject:

That's talking about window manager type "tiling" - arranging the windows so you can see multiple documents side by side.

vtpup · Posted: Sat 14 Apr 2012, 15:21 Post subject:

vtpup · Posted: Tue 01 May 2012, 15:27 Post subject: SOLVED! -- mostly

I just got scaling and tiling working in Racy 53 using a fresh install of Wine 1.5.2 (full version) .pet. This is with a new .wine folder in /root. (In other words a new wineprefix).

It still isn't a proper install of Acrobat X, but it seems to work. Steps:

1.) This has to be done from Wine's drive_C. Put the Acrobat installer there, and then open a terminal there (rt click--Window--Terminal here).

2.) Run the Acrobat installer from the terminal.

3.) The installer will report an error message saying it didn't complete. DON'T click on <Finish> because that will erase most of the installation.

Instead, right click on the border of the installer window somewhere and kill the installer process.

This leaves the Acrobat installation intact. You can then navigate to the Acrobat Reader folder and run the Reader's executable, AcroRd32.exe to start.

The printing dialog looked good this time, with boxes for entering scale and tile parameters after you select "tile all pages"

This still isn't an ideal method of installation, and I've notified Wine of the installer bug.