GOG has to inlcude a pdf reade, they also have to include Dosbox. They must ship their product in a way that it is fully usable "out of the box".

They could add an "dosbox free" or "barebone" version of the game as extra, but why the hassle? Only a selected few are bothered by this. If you really think a lot of people want this, you know where the wishlist is.

I agree. This is totally ok with me and understandable.

Now we have complains about including dosbox and foxit to the installers, we would have complains about NOT having them included if they wasn't.

There's nothing hard with unchecking the boxes here and there. It's still hundred of times more convenient than installing mother-sucking DirectX and .net framework on steam by default, without even asking me if I already have them.

Depends on the usage.

Take GamerZines' e-magazines as an example. Being able to use scripting in the PDF file really helps, as it lowers the size, enables users to pull videos on demand from their servers (and access those videos directly in the PDF file), and sign up for various competitions via the PDF files.

Of course, foul play can happen (but Enhanced Security stops execution of all scripts that aren't from trusted sources).

You know, you can easily disable all scripts in FoxitReader too? (and they are disabled be default. Same goes for website urls)

oh, and I use foxit reader, because it launches the full application like 5 times faster than adobe reader ever could.

+1.

Sumatra is free/open source software, which means the author's interests are highly unlikely to diverge from your own. It's also a nice pdf reader.

Why don't we just get our stuff in djvu format and find a copy of WinDjView from the internet for ourselves?

Ah, yes, because people rant then what djvu is... -.-
But it might be the better solution, in the long run.

Yeah! and make GOG installers in .arj , just to make things more complicated than they should be.

More brilliant ideas please!

Oh, wallpapers in .cbr format please.

I honestly don't recall ever having Foxit or Adobe Reader with my gog games, Maybe I was lucky.

Nope, neither is installed. I use PDF-XChange. But that's a nice touch. (I wonder - maybe they look for .pdf associations rather than checking whether particular apps are installed. That would explain it.)

Most likely this, it doesn't ask if it sees you have a program for .pdf files.

Had similar issues with one of earlier versions. It happend when I tried to open pdf directly inside the browser using Foxit plugin for IE8. But when I forced my browser to open pdf using external software (Foxit Reader that is) - had no problem at all.

I use foxit reader for like 3 years know, and not a single crash happened. Ever.

No, it doesn't. PDFs are a document format, document formats should never, ever, ever have scripting built into them. The whole thing is just a completely unacceptable security risk which people have managed to retroactively justify.

The functionality you're describing could just as easily be accomplished via javascript or by the servers without creating such a nice target for malware.