If you surf the Internet, you know the popularity of Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Uses for PDF files were also described in Chapter 7. Adobe Acrobat Reader allows you to view and print these files. On JDS, Acrobat Reader is provided through the package named acroread. Whenever you click on an icon for a PDF file, it is displayed by Acrobat Reader. You can also start the reader by invoking Applications → Graphics → PDF Document Viewer, as shown in Figure 10-1 (an unusual menu to place a PDF viewer). It works as a plug-in to Mozilla’s web browser when you choose a PDF file as a link from a web page. A typical PDF display looks like Figure 10-2.

Figure 10-1. Launching Acrobat Reader

Figure 10-2. Acrobat Reader in JDS

Figure 10-3. Export Utility from StarOffice

With Acrobat Reader integrated into Mozilla, when you select a link that contains a PDF document it will automatically open. You can also save the file to your system, using the appropriate icon in the Acrobat Reader toolbar, or print the file.

PDF documents often contain links and bookmarks pointing to other areas of a document or to other documents, such as the underlined text, shown in Figure 10-4. Selecting a link in the text opens the associated page. You can also see these links in the bookmark tab by selecting the sidebar view icon, which is the fifth icon from the left on the main toolbar.

Figure 10-4. The menu and toolbar of Acrobat Reader

In Figure 10-4, you can see some of the important icons at the top of Acrobat Reader. We cover the ones you may not recognize here.

As stated above, the fifth icon from the left, with the small arrow, allows you to view or conceal the left pane of the application. In that pane, you see two tabs: Thumbnails and Bookmarks. We discussed Bookmarks already. Thumbnails are useful for navigating a large document.

You can copy text and graphics from a PDF file, using two buttons in the middle of the task bar: one showing a large T and the other showing a small dotted box with pictures inside. After pressing the T button, select some text using your mouse. This text is now available to be pasted into a StarOffice document or other application. The graphics icon works similarly for graphics.

As of this writing, Adobe has not provided applications for the Linux platform. In the past, independent developers wrote free PDF readers such as Ghostview and xPDF for Unix and Linux systems. In JDS, we have the good fortune of having Acrobat Reader available and pre-configured.