FC5 - mozilla help needed

Dean S. Messing deanm at sharplabs.com
Wed Aug 30 01:10:58 UTC 2006


Aaron Konstam writes
: On Tue, 2006-08-29 at 09:49 -0700, Dean S. Messing wrote:
: > I'm unable to get Adobe `acroread' to run within Mozilla.
: > Would someone who knows give me some pointers please?
: > 
: > I'm running an up-to-date FC5 system.  Selinux is disabled.  Both
: > `acroread' and `mozilla-acroread' are installed (from the Dries
: > repository).  And I've verified that acroread works from the
: > commandline.
: > 
: > Yet when I try to view a .pdf from w/in mozilla, I get nothing.  On a
: > large .pdf, I can see mozilla taking time to read the file in, but
: > then I just get a blank mozilla window.  acroread is not being started
: > at all.
: > 
: > How do I begin to debug this?
: > 
: > Thanks
: > Dean
: > 
: Here is the deal. The Dries rpm installs acroread
: in /usr/lib/acroread/bin/acroread with a a link at /usr/bin/acroread. It
: does not install the plugin you can get from Acrobat.
: So what I did this morning to make this work is to go
: into /etc/mozpluggerrc and change the pdf clause to read as follows:
: application/pdf: pdf: PDF file
: application/x-pdf: pdf: PDF file
: text/pdf: pdf: PDF file
: text/x-pdf: pdf: PDF file
: #       repeat swallow(documentShell) fill: acroread -geometry +9000 +9000 +useFrontEndProgram "$file"
: #       repeat noisy swallow(Xpdf) fill: xpdf -g +9000+9000 "$file"
:         repeat noisy swallow(Xpdf) fill:  /usr/bin/acroread "$file"
: #        repeat noisy swallow(gv) fill: gv -safer -quiet -antialias -gometry +9000+9000 "$file"
: 
: I think that will make things work for you.

Thanks very much Aaron.

Unfortunately your solution did not work for me.
But it gave me the clue I needed.
>From my original message about this, I mentioned
that I had mozilla-acroread (from Dries) installed as well.
This _does_ install the plugin:

   /usr/lib/acroread/Browser/intellinux/nppdf.so
   /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/nppdf.so
   /usr/lib/netscape/plugins/nppdf.so


If you go ahead and

    yum install mozilla-acroread

(with /etc/yum.repos.d/dries.repo enabled), 
restart Mozilla and do Help --> About Plug-ins

you will see a nice section titled Adobe Reader 7.0
with entries for application/pdf.  Further down, in the large
MozPlugger section, you will _again_ see entries for
appliation/pdf.  Now if you try to read a .pdf you will
get the same broken behaviour I get.

Evidently the two pdf entries conflict in some way, which is why I was
getting nothing showing up in the mozilla window or starting as an
external application as your solution shd. do.

But now, if you 

1) edit /etc/mozpluggerrc and comment out the entire application/pdf
   stanza

2) delete ~/.mozilla/pluginreg.dat

3) restart mozilla

4) browse to a pdf file

you should see acroread start up within the mozilla window just as
pretty as can be.

Note: Number 2) above is necessary due to a bug in mozilla (not
      mozplugger) which you can learn by reading the mozplugger man
      page.  The file will be regenerated upon startup of mozilla.


So your solution works if you don't have mozilla-acroread installed
and you don't mind acroread starting up as an external application

My solution works if you have mozilla-acroread installed and you
want acroread to start w/in mozilla itself.



I wd. still like to understand the what's going on in
both the stanza I commented out and in the "Acrobat Reader" stanza
w/in /etc/mozpluggerrc.  This fooling around shd. not be necessary.

And I don't think either of our solutions is quite right, especially
mine.

I'm not sure whether the bug is in mozplugger or in mozilla-acroread
or I'd submit a bug report.

Dean




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