Good PDF reader.

Nichollan · 2010-09-15 13:53:32

I also like the Zathura PDF viewer the most of those I have tried. It does however have some serious text searching problems on my box that I have reported.

marfig · 2010-09-15 16:42:15

onearm wrote:

I'm liking a lot zathura: gtk, poppler and cairo are the only dependencies, vim-like keybindings and does remember where you left (with :bmark). Very fast, obviously

With Zathura, you don't actually need :bmark to remember the last page visited. Closing will automagically do that for you.

Meanwhile, some info:

(these two will allow one to see just the document without any cluttering GUI)
- CTRL+ N (hides statusbar)
- CTRL + M (hides input bar)

(To get file listing. Workaround for a current bug)
- o (open)
- Type in path and use tab completion normally until you reach the folder where your PDFs reside.
- If you wish to see a list of files, type randomly and hit Tab
- Now delete the gibberish you just typed until you reach the '/' character. Leave that one.
- Now hit Tab. The files in that directory will finally appear. Tab to cycle through them. And Enter to open

Last edited by marfig (2010-09-15 16:45:46)

ewaller · 2010-09-15 16:55:10

I really don't want to start an editor war, but if you already use emacs, it has a respectable pdf mode.

korpenkraxar · 2010-09-15 23:15:35

With the risk of being shot on sight I am going to suggest PDF-XChange Viewer which is a Windows app that runs perfectly in Wine :-D

As a scientist, I read a LOT of PDFs and for now, this program simply destroys the competition. Viewing, searching, annotating, splitting, merging... it does it all. This is certainly the app to beat feature-wise. I'd love a Free alternative on par with it though.

mentat · 2010-09-16 07:10:35

Not try to begin pdf-readers flame war too ;-) but please can apvlv and zathura users make a pros/cons list or compare the two ?
I cannot decide me between the two.
Thx !

bernarcher · 2010-09-16 07:48:06

I just recently went back from zathura to apvlv (svn version) because
a) apvlv has a split screen feature
b) apvlv integrates better in a gtk environment (esp. the tabbing feature)
c) the source is less messy and better documented than zathura (although zathura source is better accessible)

Hopefully apvlv will run more stable now. It sported some annoying glitches the last time I used it (about some half year ago).

@korpenkraxar
I do not want a bloated do-it-all monster. If I ever need to modify a pdf there are dedicated free tools available. The only thing I miss in most small pdf readers sometimes is a good annotation capability.

Last edited by bernarcher (2010-09-16 07:53:10)

Nichollan · 2010-09-16 10:15:05

Apvlv seems pretty good, although I think I'll continue to use Zathura when editing LaTeX as it has the convenient feature of automatically reloading the PDF file when it is updated.

Sara · 2010-09-18 20:13:32

I went from apvlv to zathura, and am not inclined to turned back. With a tiling window manager, I actually prefer *not* having tabs. I admit the splitting page feature is useful--I sometimes have to have the same PDF open in two or three instances because I have to reference three different places at once. But overall, I prefer the lightness of zathura, and I'm probably better off not reading from a split PDF (given my relatively small laptop screen).

chris-kun · 2010-09-18 20:26:52

+1 for mupdf

adamlau · 2010-09-19 11:05:01

Went from zathura to MuPDF for reading PDF files.

gorky · 2010-09-19 18:53:04

I use zathura, because it fits perfectly into awesome wm - no unnecessary borders, tabs and so on. The second - and probably the most important - feature is its auto-refresh.
As I work primarily with LaTeX, a pdf viewer without auto refresh is much less usable.

skottish · 2010-09-19 22:33:15

zathura with a mupdf backend. Now that's a PDF viewer.

adamlau · 2010-09-20 06:04:31

Agreed. zathura using the MuPDF backend would be sick.

gorky · 2010-09-20 09:23:05

definitely

Army · 2010-09-20 09:56:38

Yes that would be really nice!

Nichollan · 2010-09-20 10:06:22

I'm yet to be much educated about what could easily be programmed, but could there not be a general purpose "viewer program" that in a fashion follows the Unix philosophy by allowing other programs, for PDF, images, web pages or whatever, to interact with the program and tell it what to display and how the user may interact with it? I'd really appreciate being able to modify my key bindings for most file viewing in a single configuration file, and see more programs that can accommodate a wide array of preferences when it comes to user interface.

Last edited by Nichollan (2010-09-20 10:08:03)

linux-ka · 2010-09-20 13:09:05

go for apvlv!!! since xpdf doesn't work anymore apvlv became my prefered pdf-viewer. I guess every benefit was mentioned before.

mentat · 2010-09-22 09:59:04

@all Thanks for all the comments about zathura / apvlv.

I sure will check mudpf seem to be the perfect companion for ranger filemanager.
It's seem to be the winner in the high speed test category ;-)

jelly · 2010-09-22 12:40:55

indeed mupdf is awesome. Seriously freaked out of how fast it is. Time to hack that baby and give it some zathura features!

Vieira · 2010-09-29 21:42:08

I like mupdf but need to print files every now and then

natostanco · 2010-10-19 17:48:16

does anyone know a good pdf viewer where i can underline stuff? i need it for studying

natostanco · 2010-10-20 17:20:08

as far as I have tried okular is the best for noting, underlining etc because it doesnt write directly on the pdf, instead other programs can only do that, resulting in loss of the major part of the noting ability since lot of pdf files are write protected.

frabjous · 2010-10-20 21:11:34

gorky wrote:

I use zathura, because it fits perfectly into awesome wm - no unnecessary borders, tabs and so on. The second - and probably the most important - feature is its auto-refresh.
As I work primarily with LaTeX, a pdf viewer without auto refresh is much less usable.

This is what I used to think, but I've changed my mind. If you have xdotool installed, you can have your LaTeX compilation script call...

xdotool search --class mupdf key --window %@ r

... if it is successful in compiling. That sends the "r" key as input to MuPDF, which refreshes it. That's (IMHO) better than an auto-refresh, and never tries to update when it shouldn't.

In fact, I now have gvim set up with an autocmd to save, compile LaTeX and update MuPDF in such a way that the preview live-updates as I type. It emulates gummi, but with an editor that doesn't suck. I tried to make this work with Zathura, but if a compilation failed, Zathura would get stuck because of the corrupted PDF and stop auto-updating. But with the above, MuPDF only refreshes when the compilation was successful, so it never tries to load a corrupted PDF.

(It sorta works with Evince's autoupdate, since it doesn't get "stuck" the way Zathura does, but it goes much slower, since it's a much heavier program than MuPDF.) MuPDF is the only thing fast enough to "almost" keep up with the source screen.

Last edited by frabjous (2010-10-20 21:14:22)

el mariachi · 2010-11-03 14:47:00

@frabjous that seems interesting! I can't get it to work with LateXila. Should I insert that in the line that calls the (pdf)Latex script?

frabjous · 2010-11-03 16:16:13

el mariachi wrote:

@frabjous that seems interesting! I can't get it to work with LateXila. Should I insert that in the line that calls the (pdf)Latex script?

I don't know anything about LaTeXila, but you might want to insert && followed by that in the instruction that it runs for compiling with pdfLaTeX; without knowing more about how LaTeXila handles this, it's hard to know.

If you actually want to know how I do it with (g)vim, check out this thread.

Arch Linux

#26 2010-09-15 13:53:32

Re: Good PDF reader.

#27 2010-09-15 16:42:15

Re: Good PDF reader.

#28 2010-09-15 16:55:10

Re: Good PDF reader.

#29 2010-09-15 23:15:35

Re: Good PDF reader.

#30 2010-09-16 07:10:35

Re: Good PDF reader.

#31 2010-09-16 07:48:06

Re: Good PDF reader.

#32 2010-09-16 10:15:05

Re: Good PDF reader.

#33 2010-09-18 20:13:32

Re: Good PDF reader.

#34 2010-09-18 20:26:52

Re: Good PDF reader.

#35 2010-09-19 11:05:01

Re: Good PDF reader.

#36 2010-09-19 18:53:04

Re: Good PDF reader.

#37 2010-09-19 22:33:15

Re: Good PDF reader.

#38 2010-09-20 06:04:31

Re: Good PDF reader.

#39 2010-09-20 09:23:05

Re: Good PDF reader.

#40 2010-09-20 09:56:38

Re: Good PDF reader.

#41 2010-09-20 10:06:22

Re: Good PDF reader.

#42 2010-09-20 13:09:05

Re: Good PDF reader.

#43 2010-09-22 09:59:04

Re: Good PDF reader.

#44 2010-09-22 12:40:55

Re: Good PDF reader.

#45 2010-09-29 21:42:08

Re: Good PDF reader.

#46 2010-10-19 17:48:16

Re: Good PDF reader.

#47 2010-10-20 17:20:08

Re: Good PDF reader.

#48 2010-10-20 21:11:34

Re: Good PDF reader.

#49 2010-11-03 14:47:00

Re: Good PDF reader.

#50 2010-11-03 16:16:13

Re: Good PDF reader.

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