RTTSoftware Support Forum

PDF Explorer => Ideas/Suggestions => Topic started by: Anonymous on May 28, 2007, 07:41:00 PM

Title: LINUX version
Post by: Anonymous on May 28, 2007, 07:41:00 PM
This is a great program, all that stops it from being an even better program is support for the linux platform. So that is my suggestion, to release a linux version.
Title:
Post by: RTT on May 29, 2007, 12:38:00 AM
PDF Explorer uses many Windows API functions, not available in Linux, so, not easy to port, also because I have no experience with that OS :(
Have you tried already with Wine HQ. One of this days I have to take a look to see what needs to change.
Title:
Post by: Anonymous on April 06, 2008, 07:48:00 AM
After many hours of hard work, PDFE is ok on linux (I use Kubuntu Hardy) using Wine and Adobe Reader 7. It work very bad with Acrobat Reader 5.05 and not work with Foxit 2.2.
I have experimented PDFE B54 and B57 that runs. B58 version don't run.
Title: LINUX version
Post by: RTT on April 11, 2008, 11:09:00 PM
Driven by curiosity today I'm using a MS Virtual PC 2007 machine with kubuntu to check all these limitations. Build 58 is already running, after fixing some code that call a not yet handled by WineHQ, Windows api function.

What I have found until now (Kubuntu 7.10, WineHQ 0.9.58):

Acrobat Reader and Brava!Reader (after install trick) work as internal reader, but not flawlessly.

Internet Explorer must be installed to be able to use Foxit Reader, but I had no success with IE installation :(. Any hints on this?

The DBSearch, indexed content option, don't work.

RichEdit2 must be installed (I used WineTricks) to correctly show the text only PDF view and the PDFE about box.

To use the images viewer/extractor the PDFE preferences option "smooth images" must be disabled or gdiplus.dll must be native, installed with WineTricks.

To index CHMs there is the need to install itss.dll

Get hhupd.exe from
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=14498 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=14498')

At command line
cabextract -F itircl.dll hhupd.exe
cabextract -F itss.dll hhupd.exe
cp -a itircl.dll ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/
cp -a itss.dll ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/
wine regsvr32 /s 'C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\itircl.dll'
wine regsvr32 /s 'C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\itss.dll'

Only text view work for CHMs, the reader needs IE native.

For sure, many more functionalities are not working and will need other WineHQ cfg tweaks or improvements, but I'm a newby on this linux/WineHQ thing :(

Specific Wine configuration used for PDF Explorer

(http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/8/pdfewinecfgzs4.png)

Some screenshots

(http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/1663/pdfexplorerkubuntunia6.png)

(http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/507/pdfexplorerkubuntun2ym1.png)

(http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/3295/pdfexplorerkubuntun3zx8.png)
Title:
Post by: albios on April 25, 2008, 09:59:00 AM
I have used VirtualBox on Kubuntu 8.04 (with windows xp like guest machine). The last version of Pdfexplorer run perfecly with Foxy Reader 2.2
Title:
Post by: RTT on April 25, 2008, 11:19:00 PM
Quote
I have used VirtualBox on Kubuntu 8.04 (with windows xp like guest machine). The last version of Pdfexplorer run perfecly with Foxy Reader 2.2

Of course that way works perfectly because you are definitively running PDFE in Windows XP, not in Kubuntu.

In my tests I used a virtual machine only to get a running Linux PC. To simple tests I don't have a spare computer to install Linux, and I really don't want to go multi-boot.

I finally got IE installed, using IE4Linux (http://http://www.tatanka.com.br/') help, and after install PDFE and FoxiReader to the IE4Linux Wine Prefix, Foxit reader shows up in PDFE.
But IE4Linux set almost all the Windows libraries as native, so, definitively not a solution. Install Windows using wineHQ is not Wine goal.
Lets wait to see if Wine can install IE and run it successfully with its own libraries.
But probably all this can already be done, and I simple don't know how. Linux is a new world for me.