Acrobat reader 7.0 is out

[nutubu]

Philippe Landau Wrote: 
> Eric Feliksik wrote:[color=blue][color=green]
> really ?
> how fast does it open a 4 MB map of the world for example ?
> http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/world_maps/world_physical_2004.pdf
> [color=blue]
> 

For the fun of it I tested xpdf vs. Acrobat Reader 7.0 on my system
with this map.

When the map fits in the view, Acrobat Reader takes about 8 seconds to
render it. This time quickly goes down to about 2 seconds when you zoom
in.

For xpdf, it takes 24 seconds to render the map at the default zoom
factor of 125%. Since xpdf renders the pdf in a buffer, as long as you
just pan, it is super quick. Alas, if you happen to try to zoom in, the
24 seconds skyrockets. At the maximum zoom factor, i.e. 400%, my system
started to eat eagerly all the swap space.

Acrobat Reader 7.0 is non free but I have to say that it is pretty
awesome and it fits awfully well in a Linux desktop. I've been looking
for a pdf reader in Linux that could let me highlight, add comments and
doodle over my numerous scientific papers right in the original pdf. The
only "free" software that I found is 'multivalent'
(http://multivalent.sourceforge.net/) but the source code is not fully
open, it is quite slow(written in java) and the rendering is a bit
buggy.

I am afraid it'll take a few more years to have free software that can
match Acrobat Reader 7.0.

For those interested by this feature, the one thing that sucks with
Acrobat Reader 7.0 is that by default, you cannot comment pretty much
all the pdfs one can fetch from the net. I had to unlock the feature
with the Windows version of Acrobat Professional for each of my pdf
files.


-- 
nutubu