Adobe Acrobat consists of a suite of programs for creating, reading, and editing PDF files. While the Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free program for reading PDF files, has been available on RCS for some time, the Acrobat Exchange and Distiller programs are now also available on RCS. The Exchange program allows you to edit PDF files as well as read them; the Distiller program takes a PostScript file as input and creates from it a PDF document that maintains all the formatting, graphics, and photographic images of the original PostScript document.
Due to licensing restrictions, Distiller and Exchange are installed on the remote-access machines only. To use these programs from a campus RCS workstation, use ssh (a secure alternative to telnet that automatically sets the display to use your local machine) to connect to RCS, and then setup acrobat, by entering the following commands from a UNIX prompt:
ssh rcs (The system will prompt you for your password) setup acrobat
To use Distiller, enter the following command from a UNIX prompt, replacing somefile.ps with the name of your file:
distill somefile.psThe program will create a corresponding PDF file; for the above example, the file would be named somefile.pdf.
To use the Exchange program, enter the following command from a UNIX prompt:
acroexch somefile.pdf &
A window displaying the contents of the file will open.
To get more help on using the Acroexch program, including the sections on the Distiller, use the program's extensive on-line help, available via the Help menu.
Acrobat 3.0, which is presently available on the Macs in the Folsom Library, and on the PCs in Sage 4510 and the VCC Lobby, should be installed in the remaining campus Mac and PC labs during the next few weeks.
If you have any further questions about using Acrobat, please contact the consultants at the ACS Help Desk locations, or direct electronic mail to consult@rpi.edu.