[OS X TeX] LaTeX presentations in full screen - avoiding Adobe Reader

[Themis Matsoukas]

On Nov 19, 2007, at 10:00 AM, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Le 19 nov. 07 à 15:39, Themis Matsoukas a écrit :
>
>> On Nov 19, 2007, at 9:22 AM, Themis Matsoukas wrote:
>>
>>> Talking of bad citizenship, how do you remove acrobat from being  
>>> the default web browser? On my Acrobat 7.0 Pro, under preferences/ 
>>> internet, the tab "Display PDF using Acrobat"  and "check browser  
>>> settings when starting Acrobat" are both grayed out. According to  
>>> the online help, I should be able to change these settings.
>>
>> Answering my own question: it seems that manually removing the  
>> Acrobat plugin from Library/internet does the trick.
>
> Not quite:
>
> - Every time Acrobat will be updated (using Adobe Updater for  
> example), all "self-heal components" (mostly the Adobe PDF plugin,  
> the PDFMaker add-on to Microsoft Office, and the Adobe PDF virtual  
> printer) will be reinstalled without asking.
>
> - Every now and then Acrobat checks whether these components are  
> present, and if so asks whether they should be reinstalled. Once I  
> think I was offered a check box "Don't ask again", but now I can't  
> find it anymore.
>
> - The above check can be initiated manually from within Acrobat,  
> using Help > Repair Acrobat Installation.
>
> You can see what the self-heal components are by Ctrl-clicking the  
> Acrobat application, and navigating to
>
> /Applications/Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional/Adobe Acrobat  
> Professional.app/Contents/MacOS/SelfHealFiles
>
> (or similar for Adobe Acrobat 7 or Adobe Reader).


At least for the time being, removing the plugin has worked. When I  
restarted Acrobat it asked for permission to reinstall components and  
I said "no". Still, I had to enter my admin password, which means that  
Acrobat did something sneaky behind by back. Nevertheless, Safari and  
the Office applications are free of Acrobat for the moment.

As Bruno says, this will probably not last past the next update. I  
think, however, that I can lead a fulfilling life w/o acrobat and its  
updates. I installed it because I needed to open an .fdf file but as I  
discovered,  by changing the extension to pdf, fdf files can be opened  
in preview (or TS).

But my question is this: if free markets work, how come that bad  
software is so widespread *and* costs so much? The productivity and  
man-hours lost in undoing Acrobat and venting the resulting  
frustration are unbelievable. Any economists out there...?

Themis