pdf reader for the 2020

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Website · Post by **Zucca** » Fri May 29, 2020 10:42 pm

What pdf readers are you guys and gals using?

I've been using pdfjs that comes with Firefox. I've encountered some problems using it. I'd like to test out some pdf reader that conforms as much as possible to the pdf standard. But I'll take all the suggestions.

Thanks.

Post by Hu » Fri May 29, 2020 11:49 pm

I use app-text/qpdfview and have been satisfied with it. I think the PDFs I read do not use many of the features in the standard, so I might not notice missing functionality.

sdauth · Post by **sdauth** » Fri May 29, 2020 11:57 pm

I also use qpdfview. The only thing I find annoying is the text selector. Not very intuitive. I remember reading this was going to be improved but it's been quite a while now.
See : https://bugs.launchpad.net/qpdfview/+bug/958634

Otherwise Zathura is quite nice.

mike155 · Post by **mike155** » Sat May 30, 2020 12:08 am

I like and use qpdfview, too.

If someone is looking for a PDF editor, I can recommend PDF Studio. It runs under Linux, macOS and Windows. It is very powerful, but it costs money.

Fitzcarraldo · Post by **Fitzcarraldo** » Sat May 30, 2020 12:30 am

For the more-complex PDF files I use the free version of PDF-XChange Editor in WINE. Works very well (including completing PDF forms and adding your written signature without having to print the form).

To install this Windows application under WINE:

$ export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine-pdfxve8
$ winecfg # Select Windows 10.
$ cd .wine-pdfxve8/drive_c/
$ cp ~/Downloads/PDFXVE8.zip .
$ unzip PDFXVE8.zip
$ wine PDFXVE8.exe
- Click ‘Install’.
- Click ‘Next’.
- Select ‘I accept the terms in the License Agreement’ and click ‘Next’.
- Click ‘Custom’.
- Click ‘Browsers Plugins’ and select ‘Don’t install’. Click ‘Next’.
- Leave ‘Create a Start Menu folder’ ticked. Untick ‘Create Desktop Icons.’ Untick ‘Set PDF-XChange Editor as default application for PDF files’. Untick ‘Set Printer “PDF-XChange Lite V6” As Default’. Click ‘Next’.
- Select ‘Free Version’ and click ‘Next’.
- Click ‘Install’.
- Untick ‘Launch PDF-XChange Editor’ and click ‘Finish’.
- Click ‘Close’.

Finally, use winetricks to install at least corefonts in the WINEPREFIX.

Post by **fedeliallalinea** » Sat May 30, 2020 5:25 am

I use kde-apps/okular

Ant P. · Post by **Ant P.** » Sat May 30, 2020 5:40 am

The Firefox one's good enough for me. Might as well get some mileage out of one of the heaviest programs on my system.

Post by **Juippisi** » Sat May 30, 2020 5:45 am

I'm a simple guy and using GTK so Evince is the best for me. It doesn't pull in many gnome packages when '-gnome' USE flag is set.

One downside compared to okular is that it doesn't work with .epub files.

charles17 · Post by **charles17** » Sat May 30, 2020 6:42 am

app-text/mupdf. It's fast and minimalistic. Also has an Android app that even reads .epub files.

Post by **Banana** » Sat May 30, 2020 6:58 am

mupdf and since my daily work is based around webbrowsers I use the provided builds in very often

389292 · Post by **389292** » Sat May 30, 2020 9:28 am

I use mupdf, just because I know its shortcuts and it doesn't have a lot of dependencies, I had no reason to test or use anything else.

pa4wdh · Post by **pa4wdh** » Sat May 30, 2020 9:47 am

pdfjs and mupdf are my standard readers, i haven't encountered much pdfs they can't handle.

Sometimes i need to use a pdf with javascript in them, i haven't found a decent FOSS pdf reader that can handle them, does someone here know one?
Ironically, pdfjs being written in javascript, still lacks support for javascript in pdfs

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Sat May 30, 2020 9:56 am

I have both mupdf and qpdf installed but the one I use the most is xpdf v3, in my own bin directory.

C5ace · Post by **C5ace** » Sat May 30, 2020 9:57 am

I use Atril. Simple, just works.

fturco · Post by **fturco** » Sat May 30, 2020 10:05 am

I'm happy with MuPDF. It opens both PDF and EPUB books.

Website · Post by **Zucca** » Sat May 30, 2020 3:20 pm

Thanks. I already had Mupdf installed and it showed that the pdfs generated by img2pdf are, indeed, corrupted.
It only happens when I give it pngs that are 2 or 1-bit. (scans of paper). Raising the bit depth to 4 "solves" the problem, but makes the files quite a bit bigger.
Btw, I had ran all the pngs trough pngfix.

Anyway. I'll install qpdfview too. Then see which one (pdfjs, mupd or qpdfview) works the best for my use case.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

erm67 · Post by **erm67** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 6:24 am

I think png support in pdf readers is optional.

Hund · Post by **Hund** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 7:18 am

I use the Vi-like PDF-reader called Zathura (with the MuPDF backend).

https://pwmt.org/projects/zathura/

Goverp · Post by **Goverp** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 7:57 am

For complex stuff I use Acrobat Reader DC under wine. For a long time I persisted with okular, but I've recently been using tesseract to convert scanned pages to PDF books; okular messes up the location of two-column text. Also, I've an old car manual that's got some weird hierarchical set of PDF chapters, and an index. Okular can only handle the individual chapters, which makes searching hell. The Adobe product works pretty well under wine - see the winehq application entry for the gory details to get it working.

Website · Post by **Zucca** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 8:47 am

erm67 wrote:I think png support in pdf readers is optional.

What I've encountered is that it's those 4-bit or less depth images which end up showing incorrectly (not showing at all in pdfjs). The problem lies in pillow or in img2pdf. Gif gave me the same result.
We'll see how this ends up after I've compiled +200 packages involving this python 3.6 -> 3.7 switch.

As for the pdf reader of choice... mu pdf doesn't have any gui? I'm on wayland so it may affect things.

I'll get back to my desktop PC after the python switch. Might take a while.

Naib · Post by **Naib** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 9:01 am

if it is just to quickly view papers or datasheets then firefox/chrome built-in viewer.

For some more involved activities (either forms or quirky datasheets...) Master PDF Editor works quite well and its in portage

erm67 · Post by **erm67** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 10:42 am

Zucca wrote:
erm67 wrote:I think png support in pdf readers is optional.
What I've encountered is that it's those 4-bit or less depth images which end up showing incorrectly (not showing at all in pdfjs). The problem lies in pillow or in img2pdf. Gif gave me the same result.

Also gif support is optional

The pdf standard optionally supports embedding html pages and some kinds of image formats used in web pages, but most readers do no implement it.
The only formats that will be supported by every reader are jpeg or flate compressed pbm, most readers also support Group4 FAX compression, it is runlength based and sometimes betted than flate.
I use mozjpeg to compress the scanned pages to jpeg almost losslesly and than embed them with img2pdf, for BW flate (zip) compression almost always gives the best results.

Website · Post by **Zucca** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 11:10 am

@erm67: Ok, I need to use jpeg then. :(

Png would just be optimal for 2-bit or 1-bit scanned papers.

erm67 · Post by **erm67** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 3:53 pm

Zucca wrote:@erm67: Ok, I need to use jpeg then.

Png would just be optimal for 2-bit or 1-bit scanned papers.

pbm + zip for black&white or ppm for gray scale are the best formats.
Also imagemagick can losslessy compress a png to pdf with zip and high compression using -quality 100.

alamahant · Post by **alamahant** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 6:40 pm

I have used both LibreofficeDraw and app-text/master-pdf-editor
The second has a lot of functionality and it is easy to install.