SYNOPSIS

acroread [options] [PDF-files]

DESCRIPTION

Adobe Acrobat Reader is a free Portable Document Format (PDF) file viewer. Its capabilities are a subset of Adobe Acrobat Exchange, acroexch(1), which should generally be used instead of acroread, when available.

PDF files can be produced from PostScript files using distill(1), distilld(1), and gs(1). They can also be produced, with some limitations, by PDFWriter printer drivers on recent major personal computer operating systems. Other PDF-generating programs include pdftex(1) and text2pdf(1).

PDF files are often more compact than their original PostScript files, and are guaranteed to be page-order independent, allowing pages to be processed in any order, or even in parallel.

PDF viewers support magnification, printing, resizing, rotation, text searching, and also, conversion back to PostScript. PDF viewers can substitute alternative fonts for fonts that are required by the PDF file, but are not embedded in it: metrics of the original font are used, so character positions are correct, even if the character shapes may be slightly different.

In addition, PostScript Level 3 devices can directly display or print PDF files, as well as files in several common image formats, HTML files, and World-Wide Web URLs,

OPTIONS

-display <display>

Specify the host and display to use.

-geometry [<width>x<height>][{+|-}<x offset>{+|-}<y offset>]

Size and/or location of the document windows.

-help

Print the common command-line options on stdout, and then quit immediately.

-helpall

Print out all command-line options on stdout, and then quit immediately.

-iconic

Launch in an iconic state on the desktop.

-name <application name>

Specify the name under which resources for the application should be found.

-setenv <var>=<value>

Tell the main application to perform the equivalent of C-shell setenv <var> <value>.

-tempFile

Files listed on the command line are temporary files and should not be put in the recent file list. The document title will be the title in the PDF document, instead of the filename.

-tempFileTitle <title>

Same as -tempFile, except the title is specified.

-toPostScript [options] pdf_file ... [ps_dir]

-toPostScript [options] -pairs pdf_file_1 ps_file_1 ...

-toPostScript [options]

Convert the given pdf_files to PostScript.

In the first form, if the last file specified is a directory, then all preceding files will be converted to PostScript and the generated PostScript files will be placed into ps_dir. If a directory is not specified, then the PostScript files will be placed in the same directory as the original file.

In the second form, the file list contains pairs, each consisting of a PDF filename and a corresponding PostScript filename.

The third form specifies a filter, reading a PDF file from standard input and writing the PostScript file to standard output.

The following option is valid for the conversion of PDF to PostScript:

-level2

Emit Level 2 PostScript (default is Level 1 PostScript).

-useFrontEndProgram

If the application is already running on this machine, displaying on this display, and has the same application name (specified by the -name option), then a message is sent to the application telling it to open any files specified on the command line. If the application is not already running, the application starts normally.

+useFrontEndProgram

The application starts normally without checking if it is already running.

-visual <visual class> [depth=<depth>]

-visual id=<visual id>

-visual best

-visual default

Specify a visual.

In the first form, the visual class (specified by either its name or number) with an option depth determines the visual to use.

In the second form, the visual id is specified. The prefix 0x must be used for hexadecimal numbers.

The third form uses an internal algorithm based on depth and visual class.

The fourth form simply uses the default visual.

PseudoColor visuals of depth greater than 8, and DirectColor visuals, are not supported.

-xrm <X resource specification>

Standard X Window System resource specification on command line; see X(1).

NOTES

All messages other than -help are printed to stderr. (Redirect with |& or >& if using csh(1), or 2>&1 | or 2>&1 > if using sh(1).)

FILES

These files are read from the user's home directory:

$HOME/.acrorc

Acrobat Reader defaults file.

$HOME/.acrosrch

Acrobat Search defaults file.

$HOME/.weblink

netscape(1) defaults file.

$HOME/.Xauthority

X Window System authorization file.

$HOME/.Xdefaults-<HOSTNAME>

X Window System defaults file.

$HOME/psres/PSres.upr

PostScript resource file. It can be created automatically by makepsres(1).

$HOME/fonts/PSres.upr

PostScript resource file. It can be created automatically by makepsres(1).

These files are read from the system installation directory trees; <INSTDIR> is the name of the local installation directory, possibly /usr/local/share/adobe/Acrobat3.

/usr/local/sys/fonts/postscript/PSres.upr

PostScript resource file.

<INSTDIR>/Reader/AcroVersion

Acrobat version number file.

<INSTDIR>/Reader/<ARCHITECTURE>/fonts/AcroRead.upr

Unix PostScript Resource file with Acrobat Reader parameters.

<INSTDIR>/Reader/<ARCHITECTURE>/fonts/PSres.upr

Unix PostScript Resource file with font mappings.

AUTHORS

Adobe Reader authors:

Adobe Acrobat Team

Local scripts, Makefiles, and manual pages:

Nelson H. F. Beebe, Ph.D.
Center for Scientific Computing
University of Utah
Department of Mathematics, 105 JWB
155 S 1400 E RM 233
Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090
USA
Email: beebe@math.utah.edu, beebe@acm.org, beebe@ieee.org (Internet)
WWW URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe

AVAILABILITY

Adobe Acrobat Reader is freely available for most popular architectures and operating systems, and in several major languages. On the World-Wide Web, you can find it at

http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html

You can also get it via anonymous ftp to

ftp://ftp.adobe.com//pub/adobe/acrobatreader

Under certain fairly liberal conditions, Adobe also permits it to be redistributed, such as on CD-ROMs.

Other Adobe Acrobat products are commercially available; visit the World-Wide Web location

http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/main.html

for details.

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