firefox not using acroread

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 15 December 2012 09:54:48 Colin Law did opine:

> On 15 December 2012 03:08, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> > On Friday 14 December 2012 22:08:31 Gene Heskett did opine:
> > 
> > Ping?
> > 
> >> Greetings;
> >> 
> >> 10.04.4 32 bit here.
> >> 
> >> For some reason I fail to grok, firefox has started using something
> >> that reminds me of ghostscript back when all it could use were its
> >> own fonts. That was about the time of ghostscript 4.0 on the amiga
> >> IIRC.
> >> 
> >> This thing doesn't identify itself, cannot make useable printouts
> >> thru the firefox print preview facility, destroys ugly fonts by
> >> screwing with the kerning, and in general is a POS.
> >> 
> >> How can I convince firefox to use acroread?  Or if the reader has too
> >> many security flaws, can this one be switched to one that actually
> >> works?
> 
> I, for one, have little idea what question you are trying to ask.
> What has acroread got to do with printing in Firefox?  Please explain
> carefully the problem you are seeing.
> 
> Colin

Most, 90% but not all, .pdf file links, when clicked on, bring up some sort 
of a pdf renderer that is not acroread despite the claims of about:config.  
This utility is uglier by far in terms of font rendering than ghostscript 
was 20 years ago!  Its also slow, apparently rendering a 300 page document 
in memory before it will even let you advance to the next page, it has no 
print facility, so you must use firefox's print preview & print functions.  
When sent to my laser printer, it is somehow convinced the un-printable 
regions of the printer are about 2.5" wide for all 4 margins and summarily 
clips off any text on the right end of the line or the bottom of the page 
that would extend into this 2.5" wide margin.  To get a printout that is 
usable, I have had to set the print scale to somewhere in the 60% range, 
but then I need a low power microscope to read it.  I can save the file, 
open it with acroread and get what the file composer wanted to show.  And I 
can waste a tree and get that same well rendered image on paper.

So, how do I get rid of this pdf renderer, and make it use a real one?  
Like acroread, or ghostscript, anything but this POS has got to be far more 
usable.  This thing, whatever its called, needs to be found guilty and shot 
at sunrise, if not before.

Thanks Colin.

Cheers, Gene
-- 
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