Acrobat Reader

[Nils Holland]

Well, just for for everybody's information:

A few days ago someone asked where the Acrobat reader 7 link actually
came from and that no official mention of version 7 from Linux was yet
visible on the Adobe website. Still, some folks as well as me said that
the file at
ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/7x/7.0/enu/AdobeReader_enu-7.0.0-1.i386.rpm was a final release, and that Adobe might not yet have come around to announce it on their website.

Actually, this is wrong. According to Heise Online
(http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/57616), who also reported this
to be a final release version, it's not. To quote their article (which
is originally in German):

"The download of Adobe reader 7 for Linux we recently mentioned is not,
as we originally reported, a final release. Instead, it is a pre-release
version specifically provided for a customer from the Netherlands, who
needed it because of a deadline of the local tax authorities. Obviously,
the link quickly made it to the public, as it was not clearly labelled
as a pre- or beta-release. [...] The beta phase for Adobe Reader 7 on
Linux is not yet over, the final version is expected for the middle of
this year."

Now, the article also mentions that if you go to the Adobe Netherlands
website and select an English Linux version of Adobe reader for
download, version 7 will actually be displayed (in contrast to the
Englisch Adobe site, as we've all noticed).

So, bottom line: Kind of strange what Adobe's doing here. If it's for a
specific customer in the NL, why do they release the stuff in public and
don't simply make it available only to said customer? Anyway, one
thing's sure: What we've been using here is basically still a beta, and
we'll officially get the final in summer or so. ;-)

Greetings,
Nils