LWN: Comments on "The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers"

Full-screen mode?

mat — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:55:34 +0000

"Full screen" in the menu (right-click anywhere to get the menu) or
Alt-f works as well.

Free means to annotate (comment) a PDF?

okeydoke — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:27:46 +0000

Plenty of tools nowadays:

Okular in kde4 does a good job, although the annotations don't show up in other pdf readers unless you print it to a pdf.

xournal Lets you be VERY creative in how you annotate - you can do freehand drawings, etc. on it. Perfect for tablet PCs.

There is also Jarnal, Gournal, and NoteLab but I haven't tried them.

Openoffice will have Sun PDF Import extension (SPI).

You can also use PDFXchange through wine.

PDFedit, is for advanced users, and is said to be "the most reliable PDF editor for the GNU/Linux desktop."

You can do it with Foxit or A.nnotate

edinburcc — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:47:52 +0000

For a downloadable program, there is Foxit Reader or you can do it via the browser at A.nnotate.com where you just upload the file and start adding comments. Both have free and commercial versions, but I'm not sure of the details.

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

Thomas — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 22:34:05 +0000

In the meanwhile xpdf has a homepage: http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf

Free means to annotate (comment) a PDF?

chm — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 13:37:07 +0000

There's an open source java program "jarnal", which primarily serves as a scratch book device for "tablet" computers. However, it allows you to put a pdf-file in the background, add some "sticky notes" via traditional keyboard and save the whole thing back in different formats:
http://www.dklevine.com/general/software/tc1000/jarnal.htm
This might provide some of the functionality that you're looking for. However, it's been quite a while since you've posted. If you've already found something better, please let us know. Besides, the annotation feature for pdf seems quite important to convince people getting rid of inappropriate formats (like the .doc-thing) in collaborative writing efforts. Linux pdf application developers should seriously consider the "sticky note" feature.

New efficient pdf/ps viewer: Evince

pascal_eberhard — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:32:32 +0000

There is another pdf viewer which started this year. I am using it for few weeks now and... It works very well! Stable, fast and easy to use. Just what i need !

You may want to have a try...

Evince
http://www.gnome.org/projects/evince/

From the web site: What is Evince?

Evince is a document viewer for multiple document formats like pdf, postscript, and many others. The goal of evince is to replace the multiple document viewers that exist on the GNOME Desktop, like ggv, gpdf, and xpdf with a single simple application.

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

pdfdeveloper — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 10:52:35 +0000

I wonder is there any PDF viewer on Linux which supports AES encryption (new feature of PDF 1.6)?

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

aarchiba — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 03:17:12 +0000

This article failed to address a key issue for those of us with creaky old machines - which PDF readers pre-render pages? If a reader renders the next page while the current page is being read, I don't have to sit there and watch it render. On my PII/300, it's about half a second for a typical document, but half a second staring at a blank screen is long enough to start thinking about something else.

A good viewer to compare against is djview (which cannot, of course, read PDF files) --- it has decent human-factors design (aided by the underlying file format).

C'm'ere: and there's more...

slef — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 10:08:55 +0000

There's ViewPDF based on xpdf for GNUstep, which is pretty nice, I think. There's also one based on gs which handles postscript too, but I forget its name right now.

Programs that create PDF

malex — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 19:29:15 +0000

rabnud,

The programs that create PDF usually have quite different goals and
functionality. I guess the only valid comparison would be the quality of
the PDF output. If you need 100%-conformant PDF, scribus is probably the
best bet, with PDF 1.5 export coming up as well, only held back by the
absence of a Linux-based viewer, really.

Printing issues with some PDFs

barrygould — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 07:16:10 +0000

I've had problems like that (on Windows) with a Lexmark Optra R laser... solution was to get a new PostScript ROM from Lexmark.

(Or, you can use a PCL driver instead of PostScript)

Barry

extracting bitmap images from selections?

freeid — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 02:01:03 +0000

Silly enough I noticed that if you copy graphics from Acrobat Reader the bitmap will only be in the resolution you are viewing it. You can print the selection to a Postscript file though and thus get the full resolution. But it doesn't seem to work all the time...

Another annoying thing is that you still can't paste an image copied from acroread into Gimp. (In Unix that is, it allegedly works in Windows.) It works with Xpaint though.

Printing issues with some PDFs

freeid — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 01:22:36 +0000

When I've had this problem I've always been able to circumvent it by either choosing another Posctscript level from Acrobat Reader or using Ghostscript's pdf2ps utility.

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

testerus — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:04:38 +0000

Does any of the above viewers render the NYT mozilla firefox advertisement in it's full beauty?
http://www.mozilla.org/press/nytimes-firefox-final.pdf

Full-screen mode?

fjorba — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 13:47:18 +0000

In addition to -fullscreen, please take a look at the man page, section Remote Server Mode. It allows you to load a file, go to a page, raise, quit, etc.

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

rabnud — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:08:19 +0000

Nice review, thanks!

Any possibility of finding and reviewing programs that can create and edit PDFs?

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

forthy — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 14:25:24 +0000

Yes, using a PostScript viewer really doesn't count as PDF reader. Links
and bookmarks are important features of PDF. Hm, come to think, the way
LaTeX generates bookmarks and links through ps2pdf, you should be able to
have a PostScript viewer that has exactly the same features. Even features
like the yellow notes or annotations within the text (Acrobat) should be
possible with free software (and PostScript - at least the annotations,
not the yellow notes).

Things that also are important is how good it handles Type3 fonts. LaTeX
PDFs often come with these fonts (though cm-super provides all the EC
fonts). Acroread does a very poor job on these fonts, Ghostscript and xpdf
are much better. xpdf however has troubles with lineart graphics (no
antialiasing, looks very ugly).

The next on my list of issues is CJK handling. Acroread can only handle
CJK well in the 6.x version (i.e. not on Linux - and you have to
deliberately download the Chinese version), xpdf does it quite well, and
Ghostscript, too (once you have the -cjk tools installed). Why is this
important? Well, pdfs come from all over the world, and these Chinese guys
manage to put at least the one odd sign into their PDF. If this causes the
page to be rendered totally white (like in Acroread 5 or Ghostscript
without -cjk), it's not acceptable.

Rotating pages

kmself — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 12:40:51 +0000

If it's just a matter of rotating the image, the keys 7, 8, 9, and 0 will give you portrait, landscape, upside-down, and seascape, respectively in gv. Also selecting 'BBox' in the papersize dialog generally fits the display to the logical papersize also, if the sizing is nonstandard. Try these.

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

boson — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 10:19:05 +0000

I am surprised that Grumpy Editor didn't notice (or am I getting functionally illiterate?) that xpdf supports hyperlinks in PDF files, while gv/ggv don't. This is a major issue in, for example, PDF presentations.

PDF forms

bryn — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 04:19:43 +0000

PDF is, in my view, vastly superior to Word as a format in which to send documents. Many web-sites provide downloadable documents in both Word and PDF documents.

One ability which appears to be lacking in anything other than acroread is to edit forms. This is useful, for instance, for filling in details in a PDF invoice. Alas, acroread doesn't allow the edited document to be saved.

I would dearly like to see a form entry within xpdf, but it would be a true achievement to include a save changes option as well.

PDF viewers ... PDF editing libraries?

liamh — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 03:53:34 +0000

I had good luck with "Mad Builder PDF Assembler"
http://thierry.schmit.free.fr/dev/mbtPdfAsm/enMbtPdfAsm2....
It took a little while to figure out - you have to create an assembly/disassembly script - but it seems quite versatile.

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

Dom2 — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 22:26:53 +0000

Sadly, xpdf also joined the motif-me-harder gang since v2. :-(

-Dom

Find and copy are indispensable

pimlott — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 22:23:06 +0000

xpdf has more than its share of imperfections (in rendering quality, performance, and user interface), but I don't see how you could give up find and copy for everyday use. I mean, this is digital information! That's why I download PDF in preference to PostScript, even though the PostScript version (in gv) is typically better in every other way. Oh, and xpdf has some handy keyboard shortcuts, including vi motion keys!

Speaking of find, Google can search PostScript; why can't we?

Free means to annotate (comment) a PDF?

d.e.cox — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 19:02:02 +0000

I haven't found a free means to annotate (add little yellow comment boxes) to PDFs. I've used this feature of Adobe's products quite a bit, and it looks to be one of the major improvements in acrobat 7. Anyone know if this kind of capability is in the pipeline of the free readers xpdf, ggv, etc?

PDF viewers ... PDF editing libraries?

kfiles — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 15:53:23 +0000

> $ apt-cache show pdftk
> ...
>  If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic stapler-remover,
>  hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a
>  simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents.

And pdftk itself uses the handy Java iText libraries for actual PDF composition/decomposition. iText can specifically address the author's desire to modify PDF content inline. And if you don't want to use run-time Java interpreting, you can copy pdftk's technique of precompiling to native code using gjc.

See:
http://www.lowagie.com/iText/

--kirby

PDF viewers ... PDF editing libraries?

tekNico — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 09:51:06 +0000

$ apt-cache show pdftk
...
 If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic stapler-remover,
 hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a
 simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents. Keep one in the
 top drawer of your desktop and use it to:
  - Merge PDF documents
  - Split PDF pages into a new document
  - Decrypt input as necessary (password required)
  - Encrypt output as desired
  - Burst a PDF document into single pages
  - Report PDF on metrics, including metadata and bookmarks
  - Uncompress and re-compress page streams
  - Repair corrupted PDF (where possible)

Author: Sid Steward <ssteward@accesspdf.com>
Homepage: http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

sbergman27 — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 05:54:54 +0000

I don't think so. Until not too terribly long ago, one of the missing features was "Print". Yes, I 'm serious. I suspect the project could use a few more developers.

BTW, I really like this series of articles.

PDF viewers ... PDF editing libraries?

DrBubba — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 17:42:55 +0000

perl has the PDF::API2 bundle that I've used to break a series of pdf files down into pages and then reassemble them into a single document. This will require a little bit of coding on your part and the documentation with the module is a little bit spotty.

Full-screen mode?

vonbrand — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 14:28:51 +0000

xpdf -fullscreen somepresentation.pdf

PDF viewers ... PDF editing libraries?

evgeny — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 12:10:58 +0000

Consider Panda/Pandaflex (http://www.stillhq.com/cgi-bin/blosxom/panda/). If Java is acceptable, see pdfbox (http://www.pdfbox.org/) and pjx (http://www.etymon.com/epub.html).

Bookmarks

pgm — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 10:57:52 +0000

So it is!. Thanks very much.

Full-screen mode?

anselm — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 07:34:45 +0000

Do any of the free PDF viewers support a full-screen mode the way Acrobat
Reader does? I find myself using this rather a lot for presentations.
Extra credit if the viewer in question can be remote-controlled from
another application.

Anselm

extracting bitmap images from selections?

Ross — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 04:17:52 +0000

Not to mention that JPEG isn't appropriate for editing because the lossy
compression artifacts build up every open-edit-save iteration, often at a
superlinear rate. Yes, there are such things a lossless JPEGs but they take
as much space as any other losslesss format and few programs can be told to
write them.

PDF viewers ... PDF editing libraries?

yodermk — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 04:02:38 +0000

xpdf is definitely a great program; I use it most of the time.

So far, Acroread is the only reader I've used that can properly display translucent objects created in Scribus.

Related to PDFs, does anyone know of a Free library that can generate PDFs based on other PDFs? I want to write a Python program to convert a Gnumeric table of stock/option trades into a Schedule D tax form. I need a library that can import a page or two from the form, write in the appropriate values, and spit out another PDF. So far, no Free library I've seen can import PDF pages. Thanks!

extracting bitmap images from selections?

stevenj — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 23:43:02 +0000

Screenshots are not quite the same, however, because they are limited by the screen size and resolution, whereas an image-capture tool in the PDF viewer can use a higher resolution.

extracting bitmap images from selections?

grantingram — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 23:11:42 +0000

I agree with stevenj the ability to extract pictures from PDF files is extremely useful - I spend a lot of time reading PDFs at the moment and being able to get at images from them is quite handy.

Of course one can get around it - a more direct way than converting the entire file might be to take a screenshot and edit that in the GIMP - handy if you have a twenty page document.

I'm sure there must be some bit of software that will take bitmaps of arbitary bits of screen though...

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

amaze — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 22:07:09 +0000

Try setting your gnome-gv Interpreter (Edit -> PostScript Viewer Preferences, Ghostscript -> Interpreter) to gs-esp (or gs-afpl, depends on which one you've got installed). It's not ideal, but it works for ggv, at least.

extracting bitmap images from selections?

smurf — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:53:16 +0000

Ouch. Please, NEVER convert something that is not a continuous-tone picture to JPEG. You will get compression artefacts and it will be either bloated or ugly.

PNG is a better choice. By far.

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

tjc — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:32:07 +0000

> On the other hand, gpdf lacks xpdf's scrollwheel support. It does not
> provide the "find in text" and "cut and paste" capabilities, which,
> it seems, are unique to xpdf. It is not clear why those features are
> missing; one might guess that gpdf forked the xpdf code base before
> they were added.

Another possibility is that they were removed because someone in the GNOME project thought they might confuse novice users.

Printing issues with some PDFs

jeskritt — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:21:44 +0000

I find that a number of PDFs fail to print on non-windows machines, particularly with technical papers. I think it's from using the PDF writer from with in MS Office. I don't have any proof though.

I have a Mac G4, a x86 Linux box and a SPARC Solaris machine on my desk at work. Even using Adobe Acrobat reader for each platform I can't print some PDFs. They print without error, but nothing comes out of the printer. I can print to postscript and dump the PS to the print and still nothing comes out. If I print the PDF to a PS file and use ps2ps I get PS stack errors.

I find the only way for me to print these files (other than finding someone with a windows machine to do it for me) is to use OS X's Preview program. It prints them no problem. I can also use it to print to PDF and those PDFs will print on non-windows machines.