Perplexing PDF

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isw - 18 Jun 2008 03:20 GMT

I just bought a wireless router, an "AirLink 101".

The documentation came in the form of a PDF on an included CD. Dragged
the PDF to my desktop (OS X 10.4.11), where it shows the standard "PDF"
icon. Double-clicked. Preview came to the foreground, but the file never
opened. Hmm.

Tried "Open With"/Preview. Still nothing.

Open With/Safari, and the document opens just fine. Double Hmm.

Visited their web site and got a brand-new copy, which behaves exactly
like the one that came on the CD.

From Safari, did a "Print", chose PDF, and got a new document. Which
behaves identically -- that is, it will not open in Preview, but will in
Safari.

What's up?

Isaac

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Nigel - 18 Jun 2008 03:34 GMT

> I just bought a wireless router, an "AirLink 101".
>
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
>
> Isaac

Do you have spaces turned on? Often applications "forget" to move to the
new space. Or was spaces only 10.5?
Nigel

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Shawn Hirn - 18 Jun 2008 10:25 GMT

> > I just bought a wireless router, an "AirLink 101".
> >
[quoted text clipped - 20 lines]
> new space. Or was spaces only 10.5?
> Nigel

Spaces didn't exist until 10.5. The problem must be something else.

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David Empson - 18 Jun 2008 13:22 GMT

> I just bought a wireless router, an "AirLink 101".
>
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>
> Open With/Safari, and the document opens just fine. Double Hmm.

If you have Adobe Reader installed, it might have taken over the PDF
display in Safari (which it normally does by default, until you
repeatedly hit it with a large stick until it stops doing that).

Adobe Reader and Preview sometimes have different opinions about what is
a valid PDF, particularly if you have a newer version of one than the
other.

There may be something about the PDF which Mac OS X 10.4's built-in PDF
display engine (used by Preview and Safari) can't handle. Adobe Reader
has its own PDF rendering engine, so it sometimes works when the Mac OS
X standard one doesn't.

> Visited their web site and got a brand-new copy, which behaves exactly
> like the one that came on the CD.

Do you have a link to the document on the web site, so interested
onlookers can try it for themselves?

I guess it is http://www.airlink101.com/downloads.php, but which model?

Picking one at random (AR335W, which is an 802.11b/g wireless router)...

The PDF displays fine for me in Preview on Mac OS X 10.5.3.

Signature

David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz

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isw - 18 Jun 2008 18:23 GMT

> > I just bought a wireless router, an "AirLink 101".
> >
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> display in Safari (which it normally does by default, until you
> repeatedly hit it with a large stick until it stops doing that).

It is not installed.

> Adobe Reader and Preview sometimes have different opinions about what is
> a valid PDF, particularly if you have a newer version of one than the
> other.
>
> There may be something about the PDF which Mac OS X 10.4's built-in PDF
> display engine (used by Preview and Safari) can't handle.

Well, that makes the fact that it opens fine using Safari even more
peculiar...

> > Visited their web site and got a brand-new copy, which behaves exactly
> > like the one that came on the CD.
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>
> Picking one at random (AR335W, which is an 802.11b/g wireless router)...

I tried that one; it won't open for me either.

Mine's a 430. Here's the link to the manual:

http://www.airlink101.com/download/ar430w.php

You're running 10.5; it'd be interesting if someone running 10.4 (as I
am) could give it a try...

Isaac

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AES - 18 Jun 2008 18:48 GMT

> Mine's a 430. Here's the link to the manual:
>
> http://www.airlink101.com/download/ar430w.php

You're talking about the User Manual that this page links to?

Downloads fine for me and appears immediately using Safari 3.1.1 on
MacBook running 10.4.11. Saved from Safari as PDF, it opens fine as a
41 page PDF document in Acrobat 7.1.0.

(I don't keep Reader on my system because you have to choose between
always opening PDFs in Reader or in Acrobat -- there's no way to tell
some PDFs to open in one, some in the other -- and since I have Acrobat,
I find it easier to always opening everything in it.)

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Wayne C. Morris - 18 Jun 2008 19:30 GMT

> I tried that one; it won't open for me either.
>
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> You're running 10.5; it'd be interesting if someone running 10.4 (as
> I am) could give it a try...

Works fine for me with Mac OS 10.4.11, Safari 3.1.1, and Preview 3.0.9.
I right-clicked the "User Manual" link and chose "Download linked file",
then located the downloaded file and double-clicked it. It opened in
Preview, no problems.

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David Empson - 19 Jun 2008 01:29 GMT

> > > I just bought a wireless router, an "AirLink 101".
> > >
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> [Ruled out Adobe Reader as a possible explanation]

> > There may be something about the PDF which Mac OS X 10.4's built-in PDF
> > display engine (used by Preview and Safari) can't handle.
>
> Well, that makes the fact that it opens fine using Safari even more
> peculiar...

> Here's the link to the manual:
>
> http://www.airlink101.com/download/ar430w.php

That specific document works fine for me with Preview in 10.5.3, and I
see that Wayne Morris was able to open it in 10.4.11.

> You're running 10.5; it'd be interesting if someone running 10.4 (as I
> am) could give it a try...

One additional piece of background information: that particular PDF is
version 1.4, which should work in Preview on 10.4.11.

You can see the PDF version if you open it with TextEdit. All PDFs start
with a line which looks something like this:

%PDF-1.3

(with the version number clearly displayed.)

Since at least one other person running 10.4.11 is able to open that
document, that probably means your computer has a unique or rare issue
which is preventing Preview from opening it.

I don't think the content of the file or the PDF version is causing the
problem. It is more likely to be an issue to do with the mechanism for
telling Preview to open a document, perhaps due to some unusual
attribute of that particular file which is confusing Preview.

Are you aware of any other PDFs which you can't open in Preview by
double-clicking them? If so, it would be interesting to know what they
have in common, such as the PDF version (see above), the exact filename,
which folder they are located in, or their Mac filetype/creator (which
aren't easy to see using tools provided with the operating system).

Some ideas:

Launch Preview manually, and use the Open command to open the PDF,
rather than double-clicking or using "Open With" from Finder. Does this
method work? (This would bypass the mechanism used by Finder to tell
Preview which document to open.)

Have a look at the console log and system log (via
/Applications/Utilities/Console) when you attempt to open the PDF in
Preview and see if any messages appear.

Try opening the PDF from a different user account on the computer (which
would bypass any unusual preferences or add-on software that might be in
your normal user account).

If none of these methods work, it is likely that there is something
wrong with your Preview application, or some part of your system
software, or a third-party plugin is causing the problem.

You could try a restart in "Safe" mode by holding down the Shift key at
startup. This will bypass loading of most third-party software.

Signature

David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz

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isw - 19 Jun 2008 04:17 GMT

> > > > I just bought a wireless router, an "AirLink 101".
> > > >
[quoted text clipped - 43 lines]
> telling Preview to open a document, perhaps due to some unusual
> attribute of that particular file which is confusing Preview.

Well, I'm a bit embarrassed here, but it's better just to get it over
with.

I don't shut down my MacBook; I just close the lid at night. I stay
logged in, too, because I'm the only user. And, there are several apps
that I just keep open and ready to go all the time: Firefox, Mail,
MT-NW, TextWrangler, and... DUM DOM DOOM .. Preview. It has never before
given me the slightest bit of trouble, and so I didn't suspect it this
time either -- to the extent that when it wouldn't open a PDF, I
foolishly assumed that there was something wrong with the file.

Long story short, I finally needed to open some other PDF today, and it
didn't open either. So I quit and restarted Preview and now all is well.

Sorry for the trouble, and thanks (as usual) for the help.

Isaac

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David Empson - 19 Jun 2008 17:33 GMT

> Well, I'm a bit embarrassed here, but it's better just to get it over
> with.
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
>
> Sorry for the trouble, and thanks (as usual) for the help.

Glad to hear it is sorted, and thank you for letting us know what solved
the problem. One more suggestion to add to the bag of tricks in
future...

Signature

David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz

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Richard Maine - 18 Jun 2008 20:36 GMT

> I just bought a wireless router, an "AirLink 101".

I can also read the doc fine (using 10.5.3 Preview after downloading
with Firefox 2). The reason I'm posting is not just to say "me too", but
rather to note that what didn't work nearly so fine for me was that
cheapo router.

I didn't keep track how many hours I wasted debugging, but it was quite
a lot. Even if I valued my time at minimum wage, I spent more than the
worth of a decent router by quite a bit. I was thrown off by the fact
that most of the things I tried seemed to work at least reasonably well,
but I couldn't maintain a connection to a remote FileMaker server needed
for my business. I tried all kinds of things - different machines,
cables, reinstalling. The one constant was that I seemed to be able to
connect fine from home. I even drug the work machine home, where it
connected fine. Thinking it must be a problem with the work ISP
(Verizon), I tried one last thing before going to the agony of calling
them. The router was about the only thing I hadn't swapped out, so I
brought my home router into work... where everything then worked fine. I
then bought a new one for home and trashed the AirLink.

Just be aware that even if many other network things seem to work fine,
that doesn't guarantee that networking problems aren't comming from the
router.

The people I bought the small business from obviously didn't know
computers very well. They had bought a lot of cheap junk that I ended up
replacing or still need to replace. I sold one of the junk monitors for
$5. It was that or the hazardous waste dump. I haven't yet gotten anyone
to take the other identical junk monitor for another $5, or even for
free.

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Richard Maine | Good judgement comes from experience;
email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgement.
domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain

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tacit - 18 Jun 2008 23:17 GMT

> The documentation came in the form of a PDF on an included CD. Dragged
> the PDF to my desktop (OS X 10.4.11), where it shows the standard "PDF"
> icon. Double-clicked. Preview came to the foreground, but the file never
> opened. Hmm.
>
> Tried "Open With"/Preview. Still nothing.

There are many PDFs that Preview can not open.

Preview only implements an older PDF standard, and it only does that
incompletely. It can not open PDF versions later than PDF 1.5 (that is,
files created for compatibility with Acrobat 7 or 8), and it does not
implement PDF 1.5 completely--certain security and prepress-related
settings are not fully implemented.

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Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / June 2008

Perplexing PDF