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Solve : BOO! Ohio; fill-in tax forms require Adobe Reader,? |
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Answer» Anyone wanting to download a 2010 fill-in Ohio Individual Income Tax Return will need Adobe Reader 9.1 or greater. The IRS doesn't have such a requirement; their fill-in forms work with Foxit Reader. i opened it with adobe 9 and it was free Whaaa... Quote from: JJ 3000 on February 02, 2011, 05:13:30 PM Whaaa... what do you mean Quote from: michaewlewis on February 02, 2011, 04:49:25 PM Seriously, why not just use adobe? it costs just as much as foxit and is more compatible. If you're going to mention something about cpu and ram usage, try upgrading your system to something newer than a Pentium 2 and see how much it "slows" your computer down.I hear what you're saying about knock offs, and it's not that I haven't used Adobe. But so far I've been quite happy with Foxit. So until I find other instances that require Adobe or if and when I ever move to Ohio, I'll just stick with what I have. overthehill Quote I thought this video was hilariously relevant.It's not. And thinking it is is nothing less then aprophrenic; I could post clips from Dumbo and be no less relevant. I had to do some searching to find out you thought it was relevant: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whambulance "The imaginary rescue vehicle that will rescue you from someone's incessant whining over a trivial matter." A most curious perspective, because A:) it's not trivial, because it should be a standard PDF that opens with any PDF reader, not a specially designed PDF document that only opens with reader program. That would be like a Python or other script simply refusing to work on anything but one platform- for no reason at all. B:) these aren't game instruction manuals we're talking about, Tax forms and their filing every year is anything but trivial, and providing PDF files that are by definition NOT PDF files (since they clearly do not conform to the published format, or more precisely use some nonstandard Bullcrap so that they only work with Adobe Reader; not doubt some sort of extension that Adobe added so that they could get people to do exactly this for them. Let's hear it for fighting to good fight for large corporations like Adobe over the little guy, yay! For all we know this is the default way files are saved by this Designer program. It's it's similar to the DOS fakeout stub that is stapled to the front of every windows application when it's compiled- the start of the file conforms to being a standard DOS executable, and it is usually a tiny stub that basically says "This program cannot be run in DOS mode" (for the PE stub) or "This program requires Microsoft Windows" (for the NE stub). Basically, while it contains "extensions" to that standard form, (the windows application) it still FAKES out DOS by providing a valid executable to that. That is what seems to be going on here, the designer program (or the person who created the file) made it so the generated file had a "stub" page that could be read fine with any PDF reader, and conformed to the specification just fine, but also had other data that for some reason or another only the Adobe Program can read. Most likely related to extensions for Adobe Reader. Quote from: michaewlewis on February 02, 2011, 04:49:25 PM Seriously, why not just use adobe? it costs just as much as foxit and is more compatible.What? Those are companies, not products. Adobe reader is free. Foxit reader is free. They both have paid products for creating PDF files, which nobody does except for those companies who like to cause pain for others by forcing PDF on them. Although to be fair PDF is better then .djvu for manuals.... I don't personally think that's the case for ebooks, however. Quote If you're going to mention something about cpu and ram usage, try upgrading your system to something newer than a Pentium 2 and see how much it "slows" your computer down.I'll take you up on that challenge. Although I won't have to upgrade... First, It's important to know that ones experience with a piece of software begins before they are even using it- when they go to download it- how easy is it to download? Adobe's download page: http://get.adobe.com/reader/ Foxit's download page http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/ They are both pretty easy to find, Adobe's site takes a little effort but only because they have far more products. Their home page takes a tad longer to load, but I don't think very many people would find the download page by going straight to Adobe.com; instead doing a google search to find it. So, Foxit's download is pretty easy- you click the link, and the setup program downloads. Unfortunately, as with all Adobe downloads, you have to install a Download Manager. A freaking browser ADD ON. just to get the product. What the *censored* is that? Nonsense, is what it is. And remember to uncheck the "include mcaffee security scan in download" button unless for some reason you've decided, "you know, even though I'm here to download a PDF viewer for that manual that came on disk with my monitor (or whatever), I think I'll also get an AV tool that has nothing to do with what I'm trying to do" thankfully Adobe knows almost everybody will want it (ha) so they leave it checked for you. So, Now I have to restart the browser- because for some reason Adobe has this strange aversion to providing a simple damned HTTP download for their product, instead requiring people to go through some ritual involving a completely unnecessary piece of crap "download manager". I've covered these before. By this time of course I would already have the foxit reader installer on-hand. So, I have restarted Firefox (again, I'd liek to emphasize that that should not be necessary at all, but it is, because, despite my requesting a download for a PDF viewer, adobe has decided to install a Download manager for me, wether this is OPTIONAL and I can choose another method, I don't know. but this is clearly stupid. lazy? well, no, not really. over-engineering, perhaps; or Not-Invented Here syndrome. And now, after stopping a few of the videos I had open in other tabs that started playing after the browser restarted, and kind of puzzling for a bit about exactly what I'm supposed to do now, the "Adobe Download Manager" shows itself. Why is it a browser addon anyway? Is it really integrated with the browser in any way? Not really. I get to watch it download Adobe Reader. Finally. After installing another, UNRELATED piece of software to "manage" this download, I am finally able to download the software I went there to get in the first place. Of course, while I wait for it to download Adobe takes the time to also download and stream advertisements onto the same download screen, so clearly this is more a gimmick to force more advertisements and partner company products (the mcaffee thing) rather then provide a easy experience. I feel like a damned trained circus animal being forced to jump through all these hoops. So, Finally I have them both installed. So I go to start Adobe Reader; I am greeted by the Flash CS5 start screen! WHAT? oh, wait, nevermind, it just looks very similar. Guess they didn't get that "splash screens should be unique" memo, but that's alright. I am then greeted with the EULA. This is after the software is installed. It's not really that bad, but consider for a moment that the EULA is usually presented before the product in question is installed; now, let's think back- why might that not have been done? Perhaps it is in some way related to to the vastly unorthodox method that I had to use to install it, like- say- installing a browser add-on? I'm sort of curious now how it works with Internet Explorer... Somehow it uses the same "download manager", so I guess it's not really a browser addon, it just sorta pretends to b e one for Firefox... either that or I already have the addon installed for IE (doesn't look like it, though)... of course I've somehow managed to get used to the fact that browser addons are even remotely related to this task, which they of course are not. So anyway, I started it a few times, so now good old superfetch get's it up in a hurry (I no longer even see the splash screen) They both (Foxit and Adobe Reader) Open PDF files rather quickly. I opened a 70+MB PDF file and they both opened it nice and quick. Although Adobe Reader decided to tell me I could "comment" it or something, I wasn't really paying attention, so I'm not sure what it was blathering about. At that point however I wouldn't have been surprised if every third page of the PDF ended up as a full page advertisement for colgate toothpaste or something... Anyway, Foxit, after opening the PDF (and it has been open for several days and opened a of PDF files since aside from this one) was consuming about 40MB of RAM. Adobe Reader, before even opening any file, sat at around 100MB or so. After opening the file though, things got interesting; not only did that first process go up to about 150MB usage, but it also spawned a second process (why? what reason? I have no idea) that took about 80MB, and process explorer highlighted orange. (indicating it was a "job"... to be fair it highlighted foxit in orange as well, but foxit didn't seem to randomly spawn processes for no discernable reason) It was this second process that suddenly became responsible for the window.... No idea what's going on there. (by which I mean, I couldn't switch to the first process using process explorer, and it had no windows, but now those same window handles appeared as part of the other process, some bit of crazy (and entirely undocumented) weird stuff going on there, since there is no documented way to switch an already created window to another thread... And the handles were the same, so they weren't being destroyed and recreated. No idea what is going on there. Perhaps using messing around with the wholly undocumented internal windows structures of processes is what you would call a security feature. I mean, sure, it will crash if MS ever changes it (which they will) but hey, Gerald the intern needed something to do that weekend. While I was in Process Explorer, I took stock of the extra processes I had. Now I had new friends, for example, FlashUtil_10gActiveX.exe was now a permanent resident, as was Adobe Getplus or something was also running, No idea what that is, most likely part of that "downloader" nonsense. So, alright- at a quick glance Adobe Reader isn't that bad. So, I decided to compare CPU usage, by using process explorer's built in temporary "log" of CPU activity; I scrolled all the way through and back up the document in Reader a few times, and then switched to Foxit and did the same thing, and back to adobe etc- about 3 times total. looking at the process explorer "log" I saw three distinct spikes- all Adobe reader- each time it had pegged two of my cores and had sat at about 40-47% CPU usage. meanwhile, hovering over the relatively small bumps between them I saw that foxit got to about 10 percent usage. There is definitely a difference in the amount of CPU they use. And as my specs clearly show, this is a quad core, not a pentium 2 machine. Drawing text should not require two cores. Quote I've noticed that the knock off programs that are just trying to provide an alternative to big name products never get close to matching the capabilities of the program they're trying to mimic.They aren't trying to "mimic" the program. They are an alternative. They aren't "knock off's" either, because a knock-off implies the theft of an idea, and the PDF format is now freely available (and even if it wasn't they would have had to figure it out, which is a lot easier then just copying the cast mould for a new GI joe knock off). Same for OpenOffice; I'm not exactly a fan, but it's an alternative program that can open the Binary Format of several Microsoft Office applications- not because they "stole" or even reverse engineered the format, but because thet used the documentation that has been freely available on that format since 1992. Quote Also, it's not always laziness that causes incompatibilities.Yes. It is. If a PDF file can only be opened with Adobe Reader, then it is clearly not following the PDF format to the letter (the very same format that is published, and the same specification that other Readers use). Of you cannot read a PDF file with Foxit reader, then it probably won't work with any number of other PDF tools, such as scripting with python's PDF module. Needless to say requiring Adobe Reader is silly; and according to Harry_48 it opens with 9.0; but the text states that 9.1 is required, so which is it? It w as created with Acrobat 8.0, so logically it should only require 8.0 or later... why does it say 9.1? It's a designed in feature for the PDF itself, not the program; the people who made the PDF for one reason or another decided that people would have to use Adobe reader for this. Thing is... there is no reason for such a limitation. Also, it appears that the reason for this incompatibility is because it uses a "extension" to the PDF format (I say "extension" but what I really mean is "nonstandard bastardization") that somehow allows the PDF to download new content from the web. I was able to get it showing the forms but I was quickly informed of some nonsense that it couldn't connect for some reason, and it blathered on about Ohio or something. Apparently now I can't file this form online, which is fine by me... so was that it? the entire reason for requiring Adobe reader was for it to be able to tell me that I couldn't file it directly via Reader by filling out the entries and sending it back? I mean, that would be a sensible reason, but It's kind of stupid to absolutely require that that feature be available; removing that would no doubt allow it to open with Foxit. But the thing is, it's not just foxit that it won't open with. Any PDF reading utility won't be able to read it; so converting it to a word document (for whatever reason) will probably not work... unless you use some sort of Reader or Acrobat plugin. Quote It could be a feature, security, or upper management issue that makes it misbehave in non-adobe readers.I will attest that it isn't laziness; in fact they did extra work to make it not work in foxit, for what appears to be no reason at all. I'm not sure how a PDF not opening in a standard PDF reader can be called a feature (that would be like if you could create a word document in word that can't be opened in Open Office, nobody would be likely to call that a "feature" and most openOffice users trying to Open that document will call it a pain in the *censored*. Additionally, saying "well, just use Word" isn't a solution either, since many of those Openoffice users may be Linux users, and Word is not something that runs easily under a Linux System, with or without WINE. Adobe Reader is on Linux... but it's just awful. the version is several revisions behind any of the Other OS releases, the keyboard shortcuts are all wrong, and all in all it just plain blows in comparison to something like kPDF.can someone summarize BC's post for me? Quote from: michaewlewis on February 03, 2011, 09:45:51 AM can someone summarize BC's post for me? Bears... that about sums it up. With naked Zebra's in the background.... Actually you should read it thru as it's pretty informative....as most are. Quote from: patio on February 03, 2011, 10:17:58 AM With naked Zebra's in the background.... Is that like a Zebra without any stripes?Thanks alot..... that helps. I might try to get through it during my break. Or not. Who knows.....I read them all...because even after doing this for awhile he's far more knowledgeable than i and i usually learn something i didn't know... Especially about Possums... |
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