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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: u.alberton@*****.com (Bira)
Subject: Shadowrun PDFs on Linux
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:22:24 -0300
Does anyone else have a few problems with Shadowrun PDFs on Linux?

When looking at the core book with the Linux version of Adobe's
Acrobat Reader, the archetype images looked way darker than they
should. This seemed to be a problem with the program rather than with
the PDF, as the darn thing showed just fine in Windows.

Recently, I've mostly switched to Evince to read PDFs, since it's
lighter and a bit more responsive than Acrobat. There, I've run into
another particular problem with "On the Run" and "Runner Havens", the
other two files I've bought from DTRPG.

Some pages in these books have these semi-abstract decorations in the
background, behind the text - it's mostly the first page in each
chapter, tough they do show up in a few others. On Acrobat, they
display just fine. On Evince (the official Gnome PDF reader, which
uses the Poppler library to render the files), they jump to the front
of the page, covering up the text.

It's very likely that this is also a problem with the program I'm
using, but I just wanted to know if someone else had these problems.
It's as good a reason as any to start up a conversation on this list
:).

--
Bira
http://compexplicita.blogspot.com
http://sinfoniaferida.blogspot.com
Message no. 2
From: Stuart.Duncan@***************.com.au (Stuart Duncan)
Subject: Shadowrun PDFs on Linux
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 08:48:16 +1100
I've had the same problems under xpdf involving decorations appearing
over the text. Adobe works fine for me under linux however.

Bira wrote:
> Does anyone else have a few problems with Shadowrun PDFs on Linux?
>
> When looking at the core book with the Linux version of Adobe's
> Acrobat Reader, the archetype images looked way darker than they
> should. This seemed to be a problem with the program rather than with
> the PDF, as the darn thing showed just fine in Windows.
>
> Recently, I've mostly switched to Evince to read PDFs, since it's
> lighter and a bit more responsive than Acrobat. There, I've run into
> another particular problem with "On the Run" and "Runner Havens",
the
> other two files I've bought from DTRPG.
>
> Some pages in these books have these semi-abstract decorations in the
> background, behind the text - it's mostly the first page in each
> chapter, tough they do show up in a few others. On Acrobat, they
> display just fine. On Evince (the official Gnome PDF reader, which
> uses the Poppler library to render the files), they jump to the front
> of the page, covering up the text.
>
> It's very likely that this is also a problem with the program I'm
> using, but I just wanted to know if someone else had these problems.
> It's as good a reason as any to start up a conversation on this list
> :).
>

--
Regards,

Stuart Duncan
IT Manager & Systems Administrator
Access Economics Pty Ltd
Level 1, 39 Brisbane Avenue PO Box 6248
Barton ACT 2600 Kingston ACT 2604
Australia
Ph. 61-2-6273 1222 Fax. 61-2-6273 1223
http://www.accesseconomics.com.au/
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Message no. 3
From: u.alberton@*****.com (Bira)
Subject: Shadowrun PDFs on Linux
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 21:50:06 -0300
On 10/31/06, Stuart Duncan <Stuart.Duncan@***************.com.au> wrote:
> I've had the same problems under xpdf involving decorations appearing
> over the text. Adobe works fine for me under linux however.
>

Something interesting I've noticed recently is that the decorations on
the core book are rendered correctly in Evince (which is basically the
same as xpdf under the hood). Maybe there's something different in the
way they were made there? I have the core book that was made to run in
Acrobat Reader 5. The first PDF, which used some Acrobat 7 tricks, was
reportedly too slow to load, so it was replaced by Fanpro.



--
Bira
http://compexplicita.blogspot.com
http://sinfoniaferida.blogspot.com
Message no. 4
From: adam@************.com (Adam Jury)
Subject: Shadowrun PDFs on Linux
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 19:50:51 -0700
On 31-Oct-06, at 2:22 PM, Bira wrote:

> Some pages in these books have these semi-abstract decorations in the
> background, behind the text - it's mostly the first page in each
> chapter, tough they do show up in a few others. On Acrobat, they
> display just fine. On Evince (the official Gnome PDF reader, which
> uses the Poppler library to render the files), they jump to the front
> of the page, covering up the text.
>
> It's very likely that this is also a problem with the program I'm
> using, but I just wanted to know if someone else had these problems.

either:

a) the PDF reading programs you're using are drunk, or
b) Adobe Reader is drunk, but since he's the guy that's been around
the bar for the longest, I make sure gets home OK.

:-)

I don't have a Linux box handy to test the PDFs, and since Adobe
Reader 7 is available for Linux, I'm not entirely sure I should be
spending a ton of time looking into this issue. However, if someone
would provide me [offlist, thanks!] with the name of a bootable-from-
CD/DVD distro that carries one or more of the PDF reading programs in
question, I'll try to check it out sometime in the coming month.

cheers,
Adam
--
Adam Jury :: adam@************.com
Shadowrun Information, News & Previews: www.shadowrunrpg.com
FanPro Information & News: www.fanprogames.com
Message no. 5
From: davek@***.lonestar.org (David Kettler)
Subject: Shadowrun PDFs on Linux
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 03:34:56 +0000
On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 07:50:51PM -0700, Adam Jury wrote:
>
> I don't have a Linux box handy to test the PDFs, and since Adobe
> Reader 7 is available for Linux, I'm not entirely sure I should be
> spending a ton of time looking into this issue. However, if someone
> would provide me [offlist, thanks!] with the name of a bootable-from-
> CD/DVD distro that carries one or more of the PDF reading programs in
> question, I'll try to check it out sometime in the coming month.
>
>

Although I'm a Linux user I really do prefer books so I don't have many PDFs to test, but
the couple I do have (old 3rd edition stuff) seem to work fine.

If you want a bootable Linux distro to test with, Knoppix should have xpdf.

--
Dave Kettler
davek@***.lonestar.org
http://davek.freeshell.org/
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
Message no. 6
From: cmdjackryan@**********.com (Phillip Gawlowski)
Subject: Shadowrun PDFs on Linux
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 08:32:25 +0100
On 11/2/06, Adam Jury <adam@************.com> wrote:

> either:
>
> a) the PDF reading programs you're using are drunk, or
> b) Adobe Reader is drunk, but since he's the guy that's been around
> the bar for the longest, I make sure gets home OK.

Acrobat Reader for Linux != Acrobat Reader for Windows. Sure, it looks
the same, but Linux is a different beast under the hood (X Server has
different ways of rendering GUIs and their contents, depending on the
version and the window manager used).

FWIW: I have problems with PDFs (no matter the source) with AR7.0 for
Linux, but not with KPDF, while XPDF produces the same problems as
Acrobat Reader (pages wouldn't load, scrolling would be awfully slow),
once the layout uses images. If it is pure tesxt or pure image, it
works fine.

OTOH, I have similar issues with Windows, so it could be that the PDF
creator used could interpret the PDF1.3-x (or whatever the publishing
variant is called nowadays) handles layout in surprising fashion.
*shrugs*

> I don't have a Linux box handy to test the PDFs, and since Adobe
> Reader 7 is available for Linux, I'm not entirely sure I should be
> spending a ton of time looking into this issue. However, if someone
> would provide me [offlist, thanks!] with the name of a bootable-from-
> CD/DVD distro that carries one or more of the PDF reading programs in
> question, I'll try to check it out sometime in the coming month.

www.distrowatch.org should offer a few. ;)

--
Phillip "CynicalRyan" Gawlowski

"By Zarglewang's thuppy!"
- Illiad
Message no. 7
From: elgranazul@**********.org (ElGranAzul)
Subject: Shadowrun PDFs on Linux
Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:56:42 +0000
It's a problem with Poppler, and postscript level, that doesn't handle
very good transparency, not a Shadowrun books error. I've had this
problem with a lot of other e-books.

You can find a lot of documentation about this problem googling a bit or
searching in evince/poppler/xpdf mailing lists.

I've not tried with kpdf, but Adobe acrobat seems to be the option (for
now).

El mar, 31-10-2006 a las 18:22 -0300, Bira escribió:
> Does anyone else have a few problems with Shadowrun PDFs on Linux?
>
> When looking at the core book with the Linux version of Adobe's
> Acrobat Reader, the archetype images looked way darker than they
> should. This seemed to be a problem with the program rather than with
> the PDF, as the darn thing showed just fine in Windows.
>
> Recently, I've mostly switched to Evince to read PDFs, since it's
> lighter and a bit more responsive than Acrobat. There, I've run into
> another particular problem with "On the Run" and "Runner Havens",
the
> other two files I've bought from DTRPG.
>
> Some pages in these books have these semi-abstract decorations in the
> background, behind the text - it's mostly the first page in each
> chapter, tough they do show up in a few others. On Acrobat, they
> display just fine. On Evince (the official Gnome PDF reader, which
> uses the Poppler library to render the files), they jump to the front
> of the page, covering up the text.
>
> It's very likely that this is also a problem with the program I'm
> using, but I just wanted to know if someone else had these problems.
> It's as good a reason as any to start up a conversation on this list
> :).
>
Message no. 8
From: u.alberton@*****.com (Bira)
Subject: Shadowrun PDFs on Linux
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 09:20:01 -0300
On 11/2/06, ElGranAzul <elgranazul@**********.org> wrote:


> It's a problem with Poppler, and postscript level, that doesn't handle
> very good transparency, not a Shadowrun books error. I've had this
> problem with a lot of other e-books.

That was my suspicion. I have no problem with keeping several readers
installed to read the files correctly, I just wanted to know what
other people's experiences were. I'll look at those mailing lists when
I have more time.


--
Bira
http://compexplicita.blogspot.com
http://sinfoniaferida.blogspot.com

Further Reading

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Thwap!