UTF-8 with Adobe Acrobat Reader
 

Hopefully a quick question!

I'm running RH9 with Ximians' XD2 desktop installed.

When trying to run Adove Acrobat Reader, I get an error saying that it has come across ilegal UTF-8 and quits.

Could this be linked to the fact that I've had to use a generic VESA driver?

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Richard

Try

export LANG=C (same as en_US)

or

export LANG=en_AUS (or whatever it should be for Australian english :) )

try run acrobat from the same shell

If it works change your LANG environment permenately or give the forum a search, it's come up a few times

edit your /etc/sysconfig/i18n file to reflect: LANG="en_US" and SUPPORTED="en_US" then "logoff-login" and run the Adobe install script if you ran it prior you may have to modify the acroread script to reflect: LC_CTYPE=en_US. note it is aprox. 80% into the script.
good luck :)

So which language do you use ?For me,I read Chinese and should install the chinese fonts for Acrobat Reader,you can browse it from Adobe Reader's site. Also you can choose Xpdf which has a good UTF-8 support.

Modify your starting script instead!
 

Just a comment. This is a nasty problem plaguing new Linux distros, esp. RH 8 and 9 AFAIK. The way I solve it is to edit the acroread script (usually /usr/local/Acrobat5/bin/acroread). At the beginning of the script, simply put:

LANG=en_US
export LANG

This would solve the problem once and for all. Probably en_<SOMETHING_ELSE> would work, or in the worst case, use LANG=C as formerly advised.

I wonder if this should have been reported to folks at adobe. It seems that they're not interested at supporting Linux well. Their reader is still at version 5.0.8, while the Windows version is 6.0 already.

Wirawan

hey folks! I'm also having the UTF.8 problem with Acrobat Reader.
I already tried LANG=en_US ; export LANG before running Acrobat Reader, but I got the same error...
I think I chose UTF.8 support during installation, If so, I'd like to know how I can remove it.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Here is the info I know youĺl need:

[fred@CoordTelematica fred]$ cat /etc/issue
Mandrake Linux release 9.1 (Bamboo) for i586
Kernel 2.4.21-0.13mdk on an i686 / \l

[fred@CoordTelematica fred]$ /usr/local/Acrobat5/bin/acroread
Warning: charset "UTF-8" not supported, using "ISO8859-1".
Aborted (core dumped)

[fred@CoordTelematica fred]$ cat /etc/sysconfig/i18n
LC_TELEPHONE=es_VE.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8:en_US:en
LC_MONETARY=es_VE.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=es_VE.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
LC_NAME=es_VE.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=es_VE.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=es_VE.UTF-8
SYSFONT=lat0-16
LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=es_VE.UTF-8
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=es_VE.UTF-8
[fred@CoordTelematica fred]$

For retiem:

Can you do this hack: change all LC_* stuff above to either "en_US" or "C" when invoking acroread, and get it going?

What error message does acroread actually print when it failed to start (to do this you need to call "acroread" from a terminal, not from GNOME/KDE start menu).

Wirawan

OK, I manually edited the file (I don't know if it's ok to do it this way) so it now looks like this:

[root@CoordTelematica fred]# cat /etc/sysconfig/i18n
LC_TELEPHONE=es_VE
LC_CTYPE=en_US
LANGUAGE=en_US
LC_MONETARY=es_VE
LC_ADDRESS=es_VE
LC_COLLATE=en_US
LC_NAME=es_VE
LC_PAPER=es_VE
LC_NUMERIC=es_VE
SYSFONT=lat0-16
LC_TIME=en_US
LC_MEASUREMENT=es_VE
LANG=en_US
LC_MESSAGES=en_US
LC_IDENTIFICATION=es_VE
[root@CoordTelematica fred]#

However, I still get the error:

[root@CoordTelematica root]# /usr/local/Acrobat5/bin/acroread
Warning: charset "UTF-8" not supported, using "ISO8859-1".
Aborted (core dumped)
[root@CoordTelematica root]#

You may need to re-read the /etc/profile then (if you're using bash). What I meant was simpler than that. Let's try (as a user, not root):

$ export LANG=en_US
$ acroread

Does it still crash? If yes, try:

$ export LANG=en_US
$ export LC_ALL=en_US
$ acroread

Does this crash? Even worse, let's try grosser trick (with your already-modified i18n file, I mean):

$ source /etc/sysconfig/i18n
$ acroread

If this even does not work, that is a sign of a more serious problem, which I don't know yet. Sorry, I probably did not get to the crux of the problem by suggesting so many things.

wirawan0:

Thank you man!

$ export LANG=en_US
$ export LC_ALL=en_US

The two lines above did the trick! Thanks!

One final question, will I now have to execute these two lines after every reboot of the system before running acroread ?

If you want to solve the problem once and for all, try to edit your acroread startup script. The command "acroread" that you type is actually a shell script. It's typically located in /usr/local/Acrobat5/bin/acroread. On my computer, the first 4 nonempty lines are:

#!/bin/sh
#
ver=5.0.7
install_dir=/usr/local/Acrobat-5.0.7/Reader

Add the following two lines after the initial lines above:

export LANG=en_US
export LC_ALL=en_US

This should take care of the "LANG" problem every time you run Acrobat Reader.

ok. will do that!
Thanks a lot for your help.