r15264 by cbradney - #9201: Replace toolbox1 file, with PDF/JavaScript vulnerability comment added

Thu Jun 24 19:10:20 CEST 2010

Revision: 15264
Author: cbradney
Date: 2010-06-24T17:04:52.699562Z
Commit message: #9201: Replace toolbox1 file, with PDF/JavaScript vulnerability comment added

Changeset: 
M  /trunk/Scribus/doc/en/toolbox1.html

Diffs:
Index: doc/en/toolbox1.html
===================================================================

--- doc/en/toolbox1.html	(revision 15263)
+++ doc/en/toolbox1.html	(revision 15264)
@@ -3,51 +3,21 @@
 	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
 	<title>Adobe Reader </title>
 </head>
-<body>
+<A>
 <h2>Adobe Reader</h2>
-<h4>Using "Hidden" Features with Adobe Reader and Scribus</h4>
 
-<p>Adobe Reader&#174; 8.1+ is in my experience one of the essential tools to have when using Scribus. Although mostly a simple viewer, it has some advanced features which no other PDF viewer has in the Linux,*nix world: full support for JavaScript with a PDF (You did not know a PDF was scriptable? Scribus is unique in the Linux/*nix world for the ability to create scriptable interactive PDF forms) and detailed information which is embedded in the PDF, but viewable only in Adobe Reader.</p>
+<p>Adobe Reader is one of the essential tools to have when using Scribus. Although mostly a viewing application, it has some advanced features which no other PDF viewer has, such as full support for JavaScript with a PDF and detailed information which is embedded in the PDF, but viewable only in Adobe Reader.</p>
 
-<p>For MacOSX and Windows users, the above applies, as well. We do not recommend judging colors or correctness in the Mac Preview application either. If you are using Adobe Reader 8.x the settings recommendations apply as well.  </p>
+<p>As a general rule we cannot recommend judging color correctness in the Mac Preview application or any of the Open Source PDF viewers.</p>
 
-<p> Moreover, while PDF is a published standard, Adobe invented PostScript on which PDF is based and has a commercial incentive to promote PDF on all platforms.</p>
+<p>Moreover, although PDF has become an ISO standard, Adobe invented PostScript and PDF, which is based on PostScript, and it has a commercial incentive to promote PDF, as well as standard compliance on all platforms.</p>
 <h3>Hints for Scribus users:</h3>
-<p><strong>We highly recommend upgrading to the latest Adobe Reader 8.1.+ </strong>Simply put, there is nothing else more capable of rendering PDF correctly. Whatever your objections were to older versions (and there were some substantial ones, most notably on Linux), this later versions after  7.0.9 ameliorates the vast majority of them. It is far more stable, bug free and loads quicker than Version 6.x. On Linux it now has a modern look and feel. Versions after 7.0.9 also has direct support for CUPS and allows many extra options for printing.  <strong>Any PDF rendering issues with Scribus exported PDF in other viewers should be cross-checked with Reader 7 before reporting bugs to us. </strong>
-<h4>Known Issues:</h4>
-We are aware of color mismatches when viewing PDFs which have some kinds of transparency in PDF 1.4. Yes, this has been duly reported as a bug to Adobe too.</p> <p><strong>Details:</strong> As soon there is an extended graphics state parameter dictionary present which contains any transparency blend space operators, Adobe Reader 7.x switches into CMYK mode showing incorrect colours. My local printer confirmed this strange behaviour even with files not generated by scribus, its clearly a bug from Adobe.</p>
-<h3>Tweaking the Viewer Preferences</h3>
-
-<p>Right away, getting the preferences right in Reader is important to ensure the default preferences to set improve the reliability for our purposes with Scribus. There are a many preferences in Reader 8. The page display part is the most important. </p>
-
-<table width="100%"><tr><td align="center"><img src="images/acro1.png" alt="Acrobat Reader General Preferences" /></td></tr></table>
-<p>This dialog is <strong>very</strong> important to set up properly for optimized viewing Scribus created PDFs.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Display Page to Edge</strong> will give you a larger viewing area to view your PDF.</p>
-
- <p>Ensure <strong>Smooth Text, Smooth Line Art and Smooth Images</strong> are enabled as they apply a bit of anti-aliasing when viewing. If you send someone a Scribus created PDF and they complain the text or gradients) look like barbed wire or are "banded", advise the user to enable these settings which are commonly available on all later versions of Acrobat Reader - regardless of platform. There are other cross-platform fonts hints in the PDF Export Options section. <strong>Cool Type</strong> is a feature specific for making PDF readable on LCD laptop screens. It is a way of adjusting the anti-aliasing and sub-pixel rendering. Otherwise, leave it unchecked.</p>
-<p>If you are creating Scribus files with transparency effects and export PDF 1.4 (PDF 1.3 does not support transparency), you can enable <strong>Show Transparency Grid</strong>. </p>
-<table width="100%"><tr><td align="center"><img src="images/acro2.png" alt="" title="" /></td></tr></table>
-
-<p>The other options are mostly for the web browser plug-in. I find splash screens a bother, so I leave that unchecked.</p>
-<table width="100%"><tr><td align="center"><img src="images/acro3.png" alt="Acrobat Reader Screen shot" title="Acrobat Reader Screenshot" /></td></tr></table>
-<p>Next, looking at the Reader window above, there are 3 features which can be useful:</p>
-<ol>
-	<li><strong>Thumbnails (which Scribus can optionally embed in the PDF when exporting) are useful for navigating.</strong> </li>
-	<li><strong>The corner triangle</strong> is a short cut to <strong>View &#062; Document Info, Document Fonts, Document Security</strong>.</li> 
-	<li><strong>Notes, which are non-printing, can be used to give definitions or hints in a document.</strong> What we care about is document information. Within Scribus <strong>File &#062; Document Setup &#062; Document Information</strong> there is a panel to enter author and title of the document. This shows up in a panel below:</li>
-</ol>
-<table width="100%"><tr><td align="center"><img src="images/acroinfo.png" alt="Acrobat Reader General Info Panel" /></td></tr></table>
-<p>This shows the document size, date of creation and creating application. This information is automatically embedded. Scribus can optionally add author and document title. In addition, this shows Dublin Core RDF (Resource Definition Format) and document security strength.</p>
-<p><strong>Document Security.</strong> Scribus has the ability to encrypt a document with specific user rights. If you enable Security in the PDF export dialog, when you export PDF 1.3, encryption is 40 bit strength.</p>
-
-<table width="100%"><tr><td align="center"><img src="images/acropass.png" alt="Password Dialog for Opening a Protected PDF" title="Password Dialog for Opening a Protected PDF" /></td></tr></table>
-<p>If you export a PDF 1.4 file, encryption is 128 bit strength:</p>
-<table width="100%"><tr><td align="center"><img src="images/acrosec.png" alt="Acrobat Reader Security Panel" /></td></tr></table>
-<p><strong>Annotations</strong> are non-printing notes which Scribus can optionally embed within a PDF. This is really simple. Create a text frame. Then add your notes and right click, select PDF Options and check "Is PDF Annotation".</p>
-<p>For other "hidden" features, read through the online help, which is actually a PDF. Beginning with page 10, there are a number of less well known features, including the command line options. The command line options are specific to Linux/Unix and include some neat options to export PDF into PostScript. There  are also hints on settings specific to Acrobat Reader in <code>~/Xdefaults</code>.</p>
-<p><strong>Advanced Settings</strong> - Fortunately, Adobe provided a graphical UI choice for enabling/disabling local fonts. <strong>Document &gt; Use Local Fonts </strong>. What this choice does is enable Acrobat to use locally installed fonts which are named in the PDF, if it can find them in your font path.</p>
-
-<p>I recommend you set this to <strong>disable</strong> for use with Scribus. Why? As is often the case, PDFs you create in Scribus will be sent to other users who are not running on Linux. What you will want in most cases is realistic view <strong>without</strong> your fonts. Thus, the only reliable way of ensuring your doc will view properly anywhere is to embed the fonts. You can convert to outlines in the font preferences panel to save file size. This particularly important when using the Ghostscript fonts, like the Nimbus family. Acrobat Reader does a poor job of simulating them with its own built-in multi-master fonts.</p>
+<p><strong>We highly recommend upgrading to the latest Adobe Reader version</strong>. Simply put, there is nothing else more capable of rendering PDF correctly. Whatever your objections were to older versions (and there were some substantial ones, most notably on Linux), the later versions, especially after 7.0.9, ameliorate the vast majority of them. And while it's often being discarded as being a "resource hog", it is still far more stable, bug-free and loads quicker than older versions. On Linux it now has a modern look and feel. Versions after 7.0.9 also have direct support for CUPS and offer many extra options for printing.  <strong>Any PDF rendering issues with Scribus exported PDF in other viewers should be cross-checked with Reader 7 or higher before reporting bugs to us. </strong></p>
+<p>One of the major advantages of the latest Adobe Reader releases is the ability to "flatten" transparency in PDF 1.4+ files. This feature is important, because some printers still can't handle PDFs with transparency. Also, the PDF/X-3 standard, required by many printers these days, doesn't support transparency. While the PDF-to-PDF flattening remains a feature of Adobe's Acrobat program, Adobe Reader allows for creating a "flattened" PostScript file via the print dialog. The resulting PDF file can then be converted back to a PDF file with GSview or a command line tool.</p>
+<h4>Known Issues</h4>
+<p>We are aware of color mismatches when viewing PDFs which have some kinds of transparency in PDF 1.4+ files. This has been reported as a bug to Adobe.</p> 
+<p>It is always recommended to ensure your applications are patched to the latest version to ensure your system is secure. Despite its great benefits, the PDF format has become a target for malware creators and attacks via JavaScript. Disabling JavaScript execution in your PDF viewers when you don't need it may be advisable depending on your situation.</p>
+<h3>A note to OS/2 and eComStation users</h3>
+<p>Unfortunately, Adobe doesn't provide new versions of AR for OS/2 anymore. The latest version that reportedly works on these platforms is 5.1, and it requires an additional runtime environment. The runtime environment can be downloaded <a href="http://www.os2site.com/sw/dev/InnoTek/innotekruntime_112b20.exe">here</a>. The AR installer is available <a href="http://www.os2site.com/sw/util/pdf/os2kitacrobatreader51preview1.exe">here</a>.</p>
 </body>
 </html>


