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Difference between Reader Extensions and Acrobat

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Former Community Member
We are evaluating the purchase of Livecyle series of products. We would be employing ARES in lieu of having Acrobat on every desktop. Are things we should be aware of, gotchas where the RE do not quite perform the same as Acrobat. Is Reader functionally similar to Acrobat, when RE are used?
8 Replies

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Level 7
No, there are many, many differences. Reader Enabling turns on certain

specific functions in Reader. You need to look at exactly what

functions you will need.



Aandi Inston

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Former Community Member
Well, we would need to call a web service (asynchronously), access a local DB, probably via ODBC, and export all form data programmatically via XML, to name a few.

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Level 7
No, you can't do all of those things, even if you can do some of them.

For instance, Reader never has database connectivity.



Aandi Inston

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Former Community Member
If you go to adobe.com take a look at the the acrobat feature sheet, in particular the one that shows the different features available in Reader vs. Acro Standard vs. Acro Pro. Basically RE enables Reader to use features available in Acrobat Standard. There are tons of features available in Acrobat Pro beyond that, but they are more typically features used by form developers rather than end users.



Sorry Aandi, got to correct you, but RE'ing a PDF can allow it to access a DB via ODBC. However, I would personally recommend you make a web service call and let the server handle hitting the DB if needed. It is much more secure, less work to set up (don't need a local ODBC connection on each client), and easier to work with IMO.



Chris

Adobe Systems

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Former Community Member
So RE brings Reader up to Acrobat Standard functionality. Seems like that would cover pretty much everything we need?

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Former Community Member
Yes, Acrobat Pro 8 can enable a subset of the usage rights that RE can. However, it is only legally usable for a user base of 500 users or less.



Chris

Adobe Systems

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Former Community Member
We need to create pdf documents that have to be digitally signed using PKI infrastructure by people in our company and also by providers. Can this be implemented only with Adobe Reader Extensions or do we need Adobe Acrobat?

Thanks

David Zaitegui

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Level 4
Yes, you can allow Document Signing in Adobe Reader using Reader Extensions.