[OS X TeX] [ANN] TCOBrowser-0.84

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 9 juil. 05 à 23:41, Peter Dyballa a écrit :

> My system (Darwin localhost 7.9.0 Darwin Kernel Version 7.9.0: Wed  
> Mar 30 20:11:17 PST 2005; root:xnu/xnu-517.12.7.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC   
> Power Macintosh powerpc) has two MSL.frameworks:
>
> /Applications/Adobe Reader 7.0/Adobe Reader 7.0.app/Contents/ 
> Frameworks/MSL.framework
> /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Frameworks/MSL.framework (symlink  
> to the above)

It's precisely for this reason that I hate Adobe Acrobat/Reader, and  
more generally that I am suspicious towards Adobe software: they have  
a tendency to want to take over your computer, replacing built-in OS  
mechanisms by their own mechanisms upon install, without asking you  
first whether you agree. Unfortunately I have to use Acrobat for work.

Last week I updated Office v. X to 2004, Illustrator 10 to CS2, and  
Acrobat Pro 5 to 7. Then I noticed some things didn't work as  
expected, and went looking at the logs:

- ~/Library/Receipts/com.adobe.distiller/install.log indicates  
Acrobat installed PDFMaker components inside the Office directory.

- ~/Library/Receipts/com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro/install.log indicates  
Acrobat installed not only an AdobePDFViewer component inside / 
Library/Internet Plug-Ins/, but also frameworks *inside the Safari  
application itself* at /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Frameworks/,  
and also a CUPS printer at /usr/libexec/cups/backend/pdf700.

The PDFMaker and PDFViewer component can be removed afterwards, but  
the modification to the Safari application seems highly "unethical":  
how can one application be allowed to modify another application on  
its own initiative, without asking the administrator first?

Regarding the PDFMaker and PDFViewer, if one wants to keep them in  
place but simply disactivate them, the built-in mechanisms for doing  
so don't seem to work:

- The installation of AdobePDFViewer results in Safari using this  
Adobe plugin to display PDF files, instead of using the PDF viewing  
ability built in Tiger (or the Schubert It plugin on Jaguar and  
Panther). In Acrobat (and Reader as well), there is a checkbox  
"Display PDF in browser using: Adobe Reader 7.0" in Preferences/ 
Internet, but the preference doesn't seem to stick: the checkbox is  
re-checked automatically every time Acrobat/Reader is used to view a  
PDF file.

- Similarly, the installation of the PDFMaker components results in a  
new PDFMaker toolbar to be added to Word, eating screen estate. In  
the Personalize Toolbar window in Word, there is indeed a new  
checkbox "Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker", but again the preference doesn't  
stick: the checkbox is re-checked automatically each time Word is  
restarted.

The fact this happens in both cases seems to indicate this is not a  
bug but, rather, a deliberate imperialistic behaviour from Acrobat.

I remember Maarten Sneep some time ago wrote a post explaining in  
detail how to get rid once and for good of the AdobePDFViewer plugin,  
I'll look for it. I had managed recently (I don't remember exactly  
how) to reinstall Adobe Reader 7  from its installer without  
installing the PDFViewer plugin; but alas a couple of weeks later  
when installing the 7.0.2 update the PDFViewer was added  
automatically by the updater -:(

Bruno Voisin--------------------- Info ---------------------
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