05-15-05 01:30 PM
Edward Diener wrote:
> ......
> The actual case was installing the latest Acrobat Reader 7.0 release for
> Linux. I downloaded it in RPM form, used alien to convert it to .deb,
> but then I wanted to use Synaptic to install it, and I could not figure
> out how. I tried KPackage, and it seemed to work, but KPackage crashed
> afterward, and I could not run acroread.
The new version of the Adobe Reader for Linux (v.7.0) certainly is a
vast improvement over the old Linux version (v.5.0.10). There may be no
need to search around for the proper Debian package of the new Adobe
Reader; the tarball available directly from Adobe works well under
Xandros, a variant of Debian sarge, and it ought to work under Debian as
well.
I think the simplest way to install the reader is to install it locally,
in one's own home directory. The following is a straightforward
procedure for doing just that, as well as installing the Mozilla and
Firefox browser plugin.
First, uninstall the old version of the reader. If you had downloaded
it directly from Adobe and installed it in your home directory, simply
delete the entire directory.
Then proceed as follows:
1. Download AdbeRdr70_linux_enu.tar.gz from the adobe.com website.
2. Unzip the tarball; that creates the folder "Adobe Reader".
3. In that folder, execute the "INSTALL" shell script (open a console,
navigate to the folder and execute ./INSTALL) and follow the prompts.
That installs the Adobe Reader, e.g. in your home dir.
4. Next, to install the Adobe Reader browser plugin, navigate to the
Adobe Reader "Browser" directory. Execute the shell script
"install_browser_plugin", and follow the prompts (install it locally in
your home directory, as "user-specific"). That puts the Adobe browser
plugin "nppdf.so" in the folder "~/.mozilla/plugins" where it can be
found by Firefox and/or Mozilla. To verify that the plugin is installed
and enabled, type "about :plugins" (without quotation marks) in the
location bar of Firefox and/or Mozilla and hit ENTER.
5. Finally, enter the location of the "acroread" start-up script into
the PATH variable by appending the following line to the very end of the
.bashrc file in your home directory:
PATH=$PATH:<path_to_acroread>
where <path_to_acroread> is the directory path to the "acroread"
executable. As an example, in my case that would be:
PATH=$PATH:/home/robert/AdobeReader7/bin
6. A remaining task is to update the file associations to ensure that
files with the .pdf extension are opened automatically by acroread. This
may already have been done automatically during the install but you
should go through these checks to make sure everything is properly
configured.
a. Open Firefox: Edit>Preferences>Downloads>File Types->Change
Action->Open them in this application->Change->navigate to the acroread
executable in the Adobe Reader bin directory.
b. Open Mozilla: Edit>Preferences>Navigator>Helper Applications->click
on application/pdf->Edit Type->Open it with->Choose->navigate to the
acroread executable in the Adobe Reader bin directory, as under a.
c. To associate the .pdf file extension with the stand-alone Adobe
Reader: KDE Control Center>File Manager>File
Associations>application>pdf->highlight acroread->Edit->Execute tab->in
the Command field enter the command to invoke the acroread start-up
script. If the PATH variable has been properly appended, it should be
sufficient to merely enter acroread , otherwise enter the command with
the full path, e.g. /home/robert/AdobeReader7/bin/acroread.
7. To finalize the install, logout of Debian and login again. To verify
that the path to acroread has been appended to the PATH variable, open a
console, type echo $PATH and hit <ENTER>. The PATH should include the
path to acroread. Then type acroread and hit <ENTER>. The reader should
start up.
See if this works for you. Good luck.
Robert
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