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A
Anonymous
March 5, 2011
Question

PDF won't display (please wait...)

  • March 5, 2011
  • 5 replies
  • 98415 views

I am trying to get a tax form to show with Adobe Reader. The form is available at https://ww2.revenue.wi.gov/Internet/wi_efile/2010/Form1-2010.pdf . The site says Reader 9.0 or above is needed. I have installed 9.4.2, the latest version available for Debian. When I attempt to open it, I just get a page that reads "Please wait... If this message is not eventually replaced by the proper contents of the document, your PDF viewer may not be able to display this type of document." Am I missing something?

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5 replies

B
blahblah99-GdMTlv
New Participant
February 28, 2012

It is a running joke that the acroread plugin crashes on linux.  It has been that way for years and looks set to be the same way forevermore.

However there is a fix and it isn't too difficult.  Locate and delete (or move) the file npwrapper.nppdf.so /usr/lib64/browser-plugins/npwrapper.nppdf.so on my system) this is the plugin that is so flaky and causes the problems.  Now you have no embedded acrobat reader? but there is a solution:

mozplugger - it is a bit old and unfashionable but it works everytime.  It can use acroread, evince, kpdf, gv or okular to actually do the display of the pdf inside your browser.  Personally I use okular despite the many bugs (stupid landscape printing bug, "can't zoom much" bug in okular etc etc).

mozplugger can do all sorts of other stuff such as embedded word docs via libre office etc - it is pretty cool and <just works>.

Watch out for your distro though - I'm using SUSE and it stupidly insists on installing yet another buggy npwrapper.nppdf.so every time it updates flash player.  If you have installed mozplugger you just need to delete npwrapper.nppdf.so again and all will be working A-ok.

If you use (k)ubuntu mozplugger is why this is never a problem!

rockstaryogi
rockstaryogi
New Participant
February 17, 2012

No problems I've noticed on Ubuntu 11.10. That said, I tend to prefer using the default PDF viewer which is not from Adobe (Evince) and it always works like a charm. Maybe try that instead?

J
jgribbin
Participating Frequently
February 17, 2012

Those of us attempting to use Acrobat Reader on Linux, pretty much anyway, started out using Evice. We went to Acrobat because Evince is very basic. There are things you need to be able to do w/ PDFs that Evince will not do.

Online fillable PDF forms for instance.

If you don't have a useful suggestion, ...

J
jgribbin
Participating Frequently
April 7, 2011

My problem is not with Adobe Reader itself. It opens pdf files just fine. It is the browser plugin that is giving me fits.

Adobe Reader is not in Fedora's repositories, I get it from Adobe's repositories. They do not seem to have separate RPMs for the reader and browser-plugin, it all appears to be in 1 package.

I am, however, still only alloted a few pdf openings in a browser window before it quites working.

Jim G

A
Anonymous
April 5, 2011

It turns out there is something wrong with the package for Reader in Debian. Apparently it will not display documents that have certain types of forms. The IT tax guy said they tested with Ubuntu, so I'm surprised that it didn't go with Debian. I switched over to my notebook and installed Reader on its Arch system, and the forms displayed and calculated properly. However, now I have been unable to confirm my bank routing number or to submit the whole form at all. Does anyone have any idea how Reader would be communicating to submit this data so I could have a starting point to troubleshoot from?

F
faffmeister
New Participant
April 6, 2011

I have exactly the same problem with this form: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/forms/cf10.pdf

I can open it fine using Reader X, 9.4.2, and an earlier version 8 (not sure exactly which one) in Windows XP.

If I try to open it in Linux Mint LMDE (based on Debian testing) using Reader 9.4.2 (the latest for Linux) or the same version 8 as above but for Linux on Mepis 8 (based on Debian Lenny) then I get the 'PDF won't display (please wait...)' message.

It same problem Kpdf on Mepis and whatever the default pdf reader is on LMDE.

I haven't tried it on an Ubuntu based OS yet but I'm not convinced this is just a problem with the Debian packaged Adobe Reader.

This is a real show stopper for being able to complete tax returns etc online.

F
faffmeister
New Participant
April 6, 2011

Fixed it!

At least on my Linux Mint LMDE 64 bit machine.

If you install Adobe reader from the Debian testing repositories (which is where LMDE points you to) using Synaptic, when you do "Mark for installation" on Acroread you should find that Synaptic also offers "Mark suggested for installation >".

In the drop down list if you slide right, you should find "acroread-plugins".

Click on that and Synaptic will also install "acroread-escript".

Click on apply and that should provide the missing functionality required to make these forms visible in Debian based Linux distributions.

Deep joy.

J
jgribbin
Participating Frequently
March 21, 2011

I have a very similar, may be same, problem w/ 9.x Reader on Fedora 14.

I use Reader to access and print MLS forms. Since the 9.x series, I am able to view, at most, 2 PDFs per browser session useing the Reader plugin in Firefox. After 2 documents, I get a brief message, "Generating PDF ...", then a blank frame forever. It generally takes at least 6 documewnts to make up a complete contract.

I also attempted opening the IRS PDF linked in the previous post. Same thing, blank browser window. I had already reached my limit of 2 before trying it.

Jim G

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