If you're at MIT, you probably know all about Athena (if not, you can read a bit more here). Most Athena machines run Linux. And most Athena users use Firefox. But until now, Athena Linux users couldn't get Firefox to display PDFs inline. Which, of course, is what Pubget would like it to do.
So here's how to do it. You should only have to do it once. Basically what you're doing is telling Firefox that Adobe Acrobat has a plugin; a big shout-out to Kevin Chen at MIT for figuring this out.
1. Log in
2. Open (or create) a .environment file by typing
emacs ~/.environment
3. In that file, add the line
add -f /afs/athena.mit.edu/software/acro/current/arch/@sys/bin
4. Save and quit
5. Log out and then log back in again
6. Create a plugins directory by typing
mkdir -p ~/.mozilla/plugins
7. Create a link to the Acrobat plugin by typing (all on one line)
ln -s /afs/athena.mit.edu/software/acro/nsplugins/nppdf.so ~/.mozilla/plugins
That's it! Now launch Firefox (Mozilla) and test it—for example, here. When you click on the results on the left, the PDFs should come up on the right; that's how you'll know it worked. No gazillion download requests, no problems.
[If you're not at a supported institution, you'll see mostly just abstracts. To get supported, write us at team at pubget dot com.]
Any questions or problems, please write. Happy surfing!
