NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

acroread is a shell script that launches the Adobe Acrobat Reader program. The program's features are fully documented in The Adobe Acrobat Reader Program On-Line Guide, which is available from the product's Help menu.

Acrobat Reader is part of the Adobe Acrobat family of software that lets you view, distribute, print, and save documents in Portable Document Format (PDF)---regardless of the computer, operating system, fonts, or application used to create the original file. PDF files retain all the formatting, fonts, and graphics of the original document, and virtually any document can be converted into PDF.

OPTIONS

-display host:display

This option specifies the host and display to use.

-e LM_LICENSE_FILE=licensefile

Look for the product license in licensefile.

-e USEFRONTENDPROGRAM={0|1}

By default, acroread only launches one copy of the application per machine and display. When the application is already running, an auxiliary front end program directs subsequent invocations of acroread to open files in the currently-running application.

To defeat this feature and run a second acroread on the same display, either edit the file <installdir>/<product_version>/custom/USEFRONTENDPROGRAM to set the variable USE\%FRONT\%END\%PROGRAM to 0, or launch the application with:

\ \ \ \ \ acroread -e USEFRONTENDPROGRAM=0

-e ENSURE_DOUBLE_COLON={0|1}

If environment variable PSRESOURCEPATH has a value and the string :: is not part of that value, then Acrobat may not be able to find its own default font resources. If you want this launch script to automatically add :: to PSRESOURCEPATH, launch the application with:

\ \ \ \ \ acroread -e ENSURE_DOUBLE_COLON=1

-help

Prints a summary of the common command-line options.

-helpall

Prints a summary of all command-line options.

-iconic

Launches acroread in an iconic state on the desktop. Subsequent invocations of acroread will open documents in this already-running application (see the USEFRONTENDPROGRAM option).

-print [-Pprinter]

Print all PDF files listed on the command line. The print job will use Level 1 PostScript and will print one copy. If no files are specified, the program reads a PDF file from standard input.

If -Pprinter is specified, then the files will be printed on printer; otherwise, the the user's LPDEST or PRINTER environment variable selects the printer. If no printer is specified, the application prints a message to stderr and quits.

Command line printing requires X and Display PostScript. If they are not available locally, a suitable machine may be specified with the -display option.

-setenv var=value

Tells the main application to perform the equivalent of C-shell setenv var value. (Not available on all platforms.)

-toPostScript pdf_file ... [ps_dir]

-toPostScript -pairs pdf_file_1 ps_file_1 ...

-toPostScript

Convert 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 each PostScript file will be placed in the same directory as its corresponding original PDF files.

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

The third form allows acroread to be used as a filter, reading a PDF file from standard input and writing the PostScript file to standard output.

Use of this option requires X and Display PostScript. If they are not available locally, a suitable machine may be specified with the -display option.

-xrm X resource specification

Standard X windows resource specification on command line.

FRONT-END PROGRAM OPTIONS:

These options apply if the front-end program is used (see the USEFRONTENDPROGRAM option):

-acrobatprogram filename

Used to pass the main application name to the front-end program. Do not use this option.

-fifoname filename

The front-end program uses a Unix named-pipe/FIFO to pass messages to the application. The default name of the FIFO is acroread.fifo.<display>. Specify a different name for the FIFO with this option.

-plimit seconds

How long front-end program should wait for the application to launch. Default: 30 seconds.

-firsttimeout seconds

How long the front-end program should wait for acknowledgement from the application that it received the first filename passed as a message via FIFO. Default: 10 seconds.

-subseqtimeout seconds

How long the front-end program should wait for acknowledgement from the application that it received a subsequent filename passed as a message via FIFO. Default: 100 seconds.

FILES

acroread

Acrobat Reader launch script

acroread_exec

Acrobat Reader executable

acroread_frontend

Acrobat Reader front end program.

SEE ALSO

AUTHORS

NOTES