[HN Gopher] Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open...
___________________________________________________________________
Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows
app
Author : archimag0
Score : 288 points
Date : 2021-07-27 05:17 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.kowalczyk.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.kowalczyk.info)
| Macha wrote:
| Sumatra is pretty nice, and definitely an app I miss on Linux. I
| used to use evince, but it had more compatibility issues (it uses
| the Poppler library that Sumatra dropped) and I wasn't a fan of
| the UI redesigns for Gnome 3.
|
| These days I actually use Firefox as my Linux PDF reader.
| mcc1ane wrote:
| Can anyone give an opinion on the configuration file format?
| (compared with JSON and XML)
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| This app has gotten me through so many days of undergrad. It's
| one of the only windows apps that can handle textbook-sized pdfs
| well. I can search on text quickly too, while Adobe Reader can
| barely open any PDF larger than 100 pages.
| willis936 wrote:
| I just downloaded it and I'm quite impressed with the ease of use
| of the color options. Just a few lines in a text file. I can swap
| between dark and light modes easily.
|
| Does anyone know if the window background can be darkened at all?
| The window UI text color is controlled by the same setting as the
| pdf text color, so when using a dark background/light text mode
| the window UI text is very low contrast.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| I have been using SumatraPDF in every job I've been "forced" to
| use Windows, but never knew it had a dark mode.
|
| Thanks :)
| evanbubniak wrote:
| > I just downloaded it and I'm quite impressed with the ease of
| use of the color options. Just a few lines in a text file. I
| can swap between dark and light modes easily.
|
| Not just that, but you can change the settings file while the
| reader is open and it will update immediately. I use a one-line
| cmd script to switch quickly between light and dark.
| criddell wrote:
| > The future of all software is as a web app. Why not bring the
| spirit of SumatraPDF to the web?
|
| That feels like a 180 after reading a couple thousand words
| extolling the virtues of small, fast code with minimal
| dependencies.
| burself wrote:
| I think "spirit of SumatraPDF" means that he wouldn't npm
| install 800K lines of code into his project 5 minutes after
| creating it.
|
| I look at the speed and efficiency of VSCode and it gives me
| hope that it's possible to write the high quality programs that
| we're used to from C/C++ using web technologies. It's just that
| right now we don't have enough good programmers creating good
| programs to incentivize the others to do better.
| badpenny wrote:
| VS Code is neither fast nor efficient. I'm not hating on it
| as I like it more than most Electron apps, but I use it on a
| laptop with a Core 2 Duo P8600 CPU (among other things) and
| it's pretty sluggish.
| criddell wrote:
| I don't know that VSCode is a great example. I just started
| it and SublimeText and VSCode takes an order of magnitude
| more memory. If I watch the Task Manager as I type into each,
| VSCode also uses about 10x as much CPU which translates into
| worse battery consumption.
| xwolfi wrote:
| But he doesn't care about your opinion. As you can see he's not
| a great team player :D
| edwinyzh wrote:
| I LOVE SumatraPDF because is very fast! In the past I've used
| Adobe (so sluggish), Foxit reader (was fast).
| majkinetor wrote:
| So far I used colibre's e-book viewer but after this blog post I
| am hooked :)
|
| I like people that know to say NO and produce obviously good
| thing on their own.
| yetanother-1 wrote:
| An inspiring story, and good decision making process as well.
|
| Congrats on the good work!
| ufmace wrote:
| Upvoted for a number of interesting and unconventional opinions.
|
| Rolling your own JSON, XML, etc parsers raises some eyebrows. I
| guess it's sort of okay if you expect to only be reading your
| local config files versus arbitrary web content. Maybe then it's
| okay to trade off raw speed for not handing a ton of formatting
| and syntax edge cases.
|
| Writing GUI apps against the native framework. Yup, it'll be a
| major pain to ever port to another platform. But if you don't
| care to do that, nothing's as fast and clean both to develop and
| for the end-user to use as every platform's native framework.
|
| Unit tests are sometimes overrated. IMO, they're much more suited
| to building apps in dynamic languages. Unit tests are a lot less
| important if you have a good type system and compiler checking
| things already. I've heard it described before that half of the
| benefit of unit testing in these languages is forcing yourself to
| structure code in testable modules with clean interfaces. But if
| you can just do that anyways, the actual tests are less
| important.
| jstimpfle wrote:
| I think writing a JSON parser should be perfectly fine, it's
| quite a simple format (while imperfect and probably way
| overused). I would say 50 lines of header + 500 lines of .cpp
| file should be plenty to write a solid reusable implementation
| that parses to a generic tree (dicts, lists, float/string/bool
| literals). Should be doable in an afternoon.
|
| But if you disagree, you should try a particular, very popular
| JSON library for C++ (removed the mention of the name here, you
| can figure it out on your own if you want).
|
| Last I checked, a git clone of this library downloaded 260
| Megabytes of data. The project consists of many many files, but
| most notably it is a C++ header-only library consisting of
| 24000 lines of header files to be included into every
| (transitively) dependent .cpp file.
|
| When you run "g++ -E" on it (to do the preprocessing step only)
| those 24000 lines will unfold to about 84000 lines.
|
| Just write a short test.cpp with #include <THIS JSON LIBRARY.h>
| in it and add a int main() { printf("Hello, world\n"); }.
| Compiling this with "g++ -c" takes about 1 sec on my laptop.
|
| Add a tiny amount of code that "parses" the string literal "3"
| (which I think is not valid JSON actually. But anyway) and
| compile + link. Takes 2 secs on my laptop. With -O2, I'm at 3.5
| seconds.
|
| Imagine writing a larger project with many many .cpp file that
| include a header file that publishes such a dependency. Or just
| imagine compiling a project where multiple .cpp files directly
| include this thing.
|
| It's a truly sad time to be a programmer.
| newlikeice wrote:
| Best PDF for work, hands down. I don't even download new I have
| had the same exe for like 5 years.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Sumatra 7mb Adobe Acrobat DC 2.4gb
| zamadatix wrote:
| Not that it justifies 2.4 GB but the products are very
| different. One is read only while the other is everything you
| could ever imagine wanting to do with a PDF. e.g. Infranview is
| expected to be significantly smaller than GIMP too.
|
| For the most part that's perfect though. 99% of the time I just
| want to read a PDF so I just use the PDF reading tool not the
| PDF everything tool. That being said signing/form filling does
| bring me back to other solutions occasionally.
| willis936 wrote:
| In fairness, acrobat is a full fledged editor of a hacked file
| format. My Acrobat Reader DC install is sitting st 384 MB and
| Sumatra is at 18.7 MB; only a factor of 20 larger. :)
| Markoff wrote:
| personally I use Foxit, I believe is smaller than AR while
| still very powerful
| Zababa wrote:
| SumatraPDF is one of the thing I dearly miss after having
| switched from Windows to Linux. It's just perfect for reading
| PDFs.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Sumatra, alongside maybe Everything and IrfanView, is my favorite
| piece of software on windows. Incredible speed, great
| customizability and awesome compatibility.
|
| I really missed it when I made the switch to Linux, but not
| enough to consider installing WINE. Still, absolutely wonderful
| project deserving of the highest praise.
| hexomancer wrote:
| There is a new open source PDF viewer called sioyek that has
| many of the features of sumatra and has experimental linux
| builds.
|
| https://sioyek.info/
|
| (Disclaimer: I am the developer of sioyek)
| culopatin wrote:
| What is the origin of the name? Sounds pretty hard to
| remember
| hexomancer wrote:
| It means 31 (thirty one) in persian.
| culopatin wrote:
| And what connects 31 to PDFs? Just curious honestly. I
| also wonder why Sumatra is called that way
| [deleted]
| hexomancer wrote:
| Replying here because I couldn't reply to your other
| comment (I think it reached max depth).
|
| It has no particular relation to PDFs :D. It's just a
| random name. I also like the number 31.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I like the idea of the 'portal' feature. I use a wide monitor
| instead of two monitors, so two windows side by side is
| perfect for PDFs.
| krylon wrote:
| Paint.NET is great, too. It's not open source, unfortunately
| (for valid if regrettable reasons), but it's free as in free
| beer. The memory of its GUI makes me sigh a little whenever I
| open GIMP.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >(for valid if regrettable reasons)
|
| Well now you got me curious. Why is that?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Paint.NET was open source, but a pirate would download the
| code, put their name over the author's, and click build.
| That's a very clear case of copyright violation, but the
| author decided it wasn't worth the effort (especially if
| the pirate is in another country).
|
| https://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-
| beware...
| genpfault wrote:
| > Initially, Paint.net was released under a modified
| version of the MIT License, with the exclusion of the
| installer, text, and graphics. It was completely open-
| source, but because breaches of license, all resource files
| (such as interface text and icons) were released under a
| non-free Creative Commons license forbidding modification,
| and the installer was made closed-source. Version 3.36 was
| initially released as partial open-source, but Brewster
| later took down the source code, citing problems with
| plagiarism. In version 3.5, paint.net became proprietary
| software. Users are now prohibited from modifying it.[1]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.net#History
| angus-prune wrote:
| The author blogged about it in 2009 [1]
|
| TL;DR They used a MIT licence and other people were selling
| broken, rebranded cashgrab copies without changing things
| like the installer or crash logs being sent to the author
| etc
|
| [1] https://blog.getpaint.net/2009/11/06/a-new-license-for-
| paint...
| beerandt wrote:
| So why isn't this a problem for other open source
| software? Or is it? Is it only because of the high demand
| for a cheaper/free Photoshop alternative?
| david_allison wrote:
| It is.
|
| It's more than frustrating to have crash logs that don't
| refer to your code and contain access tokens or similar
| data because the author of the 'rebranded' software
| doesn't care about user privacy.
| slugs19 wrote:
| I use photopea.com. It's a Photoshop clone but loads much
| faster and works great for when you don't need some of the
| newest / cutting edge PS features and don't work with large
| files.
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| How have I never tried this. Nice project.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Most amazing thing to me is that it is built and
| maintained by a single developer.
| npteljes wrote:
| Have you tried Pinta? Filled the niche for me after switching
| to Linux.
| pndy wrote:
| Pinta uses an older Paint.Net code -
| https://github.com/PintaProject/Pinta
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Apparently the author was unhappy with someone re-
| releasing the software while erasing the original credits
| (multiple times?): <https://stackoverflow.com/a/1693549>.
| Not sure why hiding the source code would help much, but
| oh well.
| pizza234 wrote:
| I did, and unfortunately it's usable only for extremely
| basic cases.
|
| Images of a few megapixels will cause it to crash or hang
| on selection. Happened so many times that I am forced to
| use GIMP.
| Zababa wrote:
| Pinta crashes very frequently for me, usually after 2/3
| operations.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I love Sumatra too. I dislike there is no dark mode so I just
| used inverted colors and it has worked well. Super lightweight
| and simple. Unlike adobe which is bloated, slow, and annoying.
| Multicomp wrote:
| Big kudos to the author for not getting sucked into the
| Electron Maelstrom. I find it so interesting that fancy MVU
| style Elm web UI event loops etc. all just reinvent the message
| loop that Windows has used since Win95.
|
| My PDF journey went from Adobe to Foxit to Firefox to
| SumatraPDF to Okular.
|
| I chose Okular over SumatraPDF because it does form fills and
| saves said form fill data to a new PDF. (Sumatra may do form
| fills now, IDK)
|
| I never would have tried Ocular if I wasn't on Fedora KDE,
| Sumatra was good enough, and I just fell back to FF when I had
| to do form fills (then print via CutePDF).
|
| Now that Okular is just a 'choco install okular' away from
| having it on Windows as well as Linux, I get application
| consistency, form-fills that save modified PDF files, and
| annotation stuff.
|
| But for Grandma? SumatraPDF it is.
| Narishma wrote:
| > the message loop that Windows has used since Win95
|
| I'm pretty sure Windows had a message loop since the very
| first version.
| rand49an wrote:
| I'd add Bvckup 2 to that list. Simply a application for
| copying/mirroring directories but is quick with a simple UI
| despite having lots of options.
|
| Bought a license years ago but still use it daily.
| luismedel wrote:
| Happy customer here. Bvckup2 is one of the most polished
| pieces of software I've ever used.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I wasn't aware of Everything - seems interesting. Are there
| equivalents to these that you like on Linux?
| wander_homer wrote:
| FSearch is intended to be an alternative to Everything.
| However it doesn't have feature parity (and probably won't
| ever have due to some platform limitations on Linux).
| Disclaimer: I'm the author of FSearch.
|
| I also like to use fzf a lot, which is an amazing search
| utility (not only for finding files) for the terminal.
| radmuzom wrote:
| Agreed. And it's written in the native Win32 API. I personally
| find native Win32 apps much more usable with better UI/UX than
| most "modern" frameworks.
| nolroz wrote:
| What's wrong with WINE?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Not the poster but in brief using wine for your workflow
| implies that between version n and n+1 something may stop
| working potentially with a workaround or potentially forever.
| It's also styled funny compared to native apps.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Nothing wrong with it, I just think it's too much stuff to
| have on my system for a single program. And it introduces new
| kinds of vulnerabilities that I don't care for.
| keb_ wrote:
| There really is an abundance of high quality, and performant
| open-source applications on Windows. Among the three you've
| listed, I can also mention Notepad++, JPEGView, MPC-HC,
| Scoop.sh, and ShareX.
| dexterhaslem wrote:
| long time user of SumatraPDF, this was a good read.
|
| > Let's say I need to do a network request. I could include a
| monster library like curl or I could write 300 lines of code
| using win32 APIs. I wrote 300 lines of code.
|
| huh, reminds me of tangent I have been in the same exact boat and
| did the same. Then something came up with SSL and just dragged in
| curl and doubled executable size. I think things are better these
| days in WinHTTP..
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| SumatraPDF is my absolutely favourite PDF reader, but I wish the
| author took security more seriously. At least for a long while
| there were no official releases for months, if not years, with
| known crashes in muPDF (for which I think known exploits and
| patches existed), but since SumatraPDF used a custom muPDF
| version, it required manual patching. Maybe things are better
| these days (I see updates are more frequent again), but with PDFs
| being a big attack vectors these days, it leaves a bit of a sour
| aftertaste.
| hythyt wrote:
| Best PDF reader ever!
| Hublium wrote:
| I still install Sumatra PDF on every Windows PC I have to work
| on. It's a habit I've kept from the days when Acrobat Reader took
| like 30 seconds to start.
| jstimpfle wrote:
| > From the beginning my goal was to keep the UI of SumatraPDF as
| simple as possible. An 80/20 app: 80% of functionality with 20%
| of the UI.
|
| Come on, voices! Shout! "Worse is better" is the root of all
| evil. It's a virus, like C and Unix, and it is why most software
| is so miserable.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Simple != Worse.
|
| Feature bloat is another reason software is miserable.
| jstimpfle wrote:
| Should have added an </s> tag I guess...
| BugWatch wrote:
| From what I can see, he's a great team player.
| navane wrote:
| Does anyone know why it's never possible to just transfer money,
| but they ask for patreon or paypal? I live in the EU and as far
| as I know its super cheap to send money into a bank account. At
| least cheaper than what I suppose is patreon's cut.
| justusthane wrote:
| Because in the U.S. we don't really have a standardized way to
| transfer money to another bank account, at least not without
| knowing their bank routing number and account number, which
| isn't really information you want to share :)
|
| Silly, I know.
| justusthane wrote:
| I moved to Canada recently and here we have something called
| Interac e-transfer -- you can send anyone money using only
| their phone number or email address. I'm not sure why the
| U.S. is so behind in that regard.
| mlukaszek wrote:
| Sorry this may be an obvious thing but I am genuinely curious
| (and I don't live in the US): why would one be afraid of
| sharing those? It's not like they're your credit card details
| or something. What am I missing?
| Falcorian wrote:
| Because the same two numbers (routing and account) are used
| to deposit money _AND_ debit money.
|
| So if you post your account numbers I can pull all your
| money out. Now you'll likely get it back if you file a
| fraud claim, but that's an extra Hassel, and your out finds
| until they give you a provisional credit.
| xwolfi wrote:
| That can't be right. Im a European living in Hong Kong,
| both places, widely different you'll admit (HK still
| doesn't have frigging IBANs), I can give you here my
| account number, you'd be able to do NOTHING with it,
| nothing but GIVE me money.
|
| To withdraw in both continent you'd need a pin or a
| signature + a tamper-proof ID card. The web app in Hong
| Kong has 2 passwords + 2 private key phone checks + insta
| SMS sent on any output. My French bank resets the private
| key every 3 months and require a strong re-auth (SMS or
| postal mail).
|
| To direct debit, in HK you can only trigger it from the
| source account by registering the target online, it can't
| be done the other way around, while in France you need a
| signed authorization - but I suppose that can be faked if
| you have a target entity already registered and fake
| signatures to a bank.
|
| And you're telling me in the US I know your target bank
| account to wire you pocket money at your birthday, I can
| also just withdraw ? That can't be right sorry.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| >And you're telling me in the US I know your target bank
| account to wire you pocket money at your birthday, I can
| also just withdraw ? That can't be right sorry.
|
| Yes, it can be and it is right.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| How hard is it to get those debits reversed?
|
| Here in the UK while it's super easy to set up a
| fraudulent direct debit on someone else's account
| details, it's equally easy to claim those payments back
| (and the scheme guarantees you the right to be able to
| claim a payment back for any reason, doesn't even have to
| be fraud - the merchant can of course still chase you if
| you've declined a legitimate payment you owe them).
| fnomnom wrote:
| well its the same in europe but its not that this is
| happening. the information (IBAN) you need to wire money
| via SEPA transfer can also be used to fake an automated
| SEPA debit system for subscriptions.
|
| E V E R Y german company has their SEPA information on
| almost every piece of writing that leaves the company (in
| the footer) and thus far i think widespread misuse/fraud
| is not really a thing.
| xwolfi wrote:
| The debit system for sub here in HK is only possible on
| the user side. You can't automate it like in Europe, the
| dude has to go to his own account and register it himself
| with the company's target account.
|
| But what you say must be impossible in SEPA too - to fake
| a sub registration you'd have to register with a
| corporation ID as a subscription receiver in the SEPA
| area. I'd suppose at least you fraud one person you're
| immediately found. But it's also that you probably can't
| even register without at least a sort of reputation
| check.
| Tomte wrote:
| It's also why Donald Knuth doesn't hand out real cheques
| anymore... too many people (me included, but I later
| blackened those parts) posted pictures of their cheques
| online: https://www-cs-
| faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html
|
| I don't know if something really happened or if he was
| just being cautious, but so the Bank of San Seriffe was
| born: https://www-cs-
| faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html
| barbarbar wrote:
| You can pull from an account you don't own? This sounds
| completely insane.
| acdha wrote:
| Yes -- and it doesn't require anything more than a typo.
| Whether or not the banks will reimburse it will depend on
| the bank and whether the money has already moved from the
| target account. It's never fast but I've heard at least a
| few stories about complete nightmares where the bank was
| essentially accusing the victim of fraud despite having
| utterly failed to protect their customer.
| barbarbar wrote:
| Thank you for responding. It is really horrible it sounds
| like you can not really be safe. Really strange that the
| owner is not authorising the payout from his/hers
| account.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Yup. Welcome to ACH.
| jdlyga wrote:
| People in the US use either Paypal or Zelle for personal
| transfers. Zelle is a standard that's supported by most US
| banks. Otherwise, Paypal. But Patreon even though they take a
| cut is used more because it's easy to give people exclusive
| benefits.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| For me, it puts a comfortable professional distance between
| public projects and real accounts, and it reduces friction on
| pseudonymous and international payments.
|
| Banks and credit unions in the US usually have a bill pay
| system to send checks or e-checks for free. Some people do use
| it to contribute to projects, sometimes even as a recurring
| donation, but it's rare. I'm not sure it would be so cheap if
| it weren't rare.
| david_allison wrote:
| (not the author)
|
| Despite getting free transfers (UK), I prefer middlemen.
|
| I've had one transfer via Revolut, it was significantly more
| effort than I'd expected, but I'd do it again if explicitly
| asked for.
|
| General security advice is to not share your bank details. I'd
| rather take the hit from PayPal fees or someone not donating
| rather than worrying about fraud. [0] for example.
|
| Patreon (etc..) is recurring revenue, which builds confidence
| that what you're doing is sustainable long-term. When an OSS
| project opens for donations, it typically has an established
| userbase. The first "ask" will bring a comparatively large
| amount of money compared to the next "ask", and it raises the
| question of whether one-time donations will dwindle to zero.
| Recurring revenue hedges against that (and also allows more
| community building).
|
| [0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7174760.stm
| dataflow wrote:
| Any chance it'll use subpixel smoothing one day? Grayscale
| smoothing makes me want to tear my eyes out. It's the main thing
| that prevents me from ever switching.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I see comments like this sometimes and wonder if people are
| born with super eyes or something and I missed out. I only
| notice the difference between the various HD standards and
| standard def if they're put right next to each other, don't
| even bother owning a monitor with >1920x1080, etc.
| dataflow wrote:
| I promise you it's just as baffling to me that some people
| _don 't_ notice it! It seems clear as day to me and I don't
| even have great eyesight. Maybe it's something like font
| kerning where it's hard to notice but also hard to un-notice?
|
| Here's an example, can you not see the difference in
| sharpness clearly?
|
| - Sumatra (grayscale): https://i.imgur.com/wOP8hdX.png
|
| - Acrobat (subpixel): https://i.imgur.com/YXRy1WJ.png
|
| (NOTE: Make sure you're viewing just the unscaled image by
| itself. You can download each and view it in a 1:1 pixel
| viewer to sure your browser isn't scaling it. Or run
| document.body.style.zoom = 1 / window.devicePixelRatio in
| Chrome.)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| If I flip between them I can see a difference, yes, but it
| doesn't exactly make my eyes bleed. Opened up a random PDF
| in Sumatra without something to compare it to and, now
| having seen it, still nothing jumps out. Then again, I grew
| up with bitmapped fonts in 320x200 on a CRT.
| mcguire wrote:
| Here is a lesson you don't often see, but has worked every time
| I've used it:
|
| " _I was able to incrementally convert program form using Poppler
| API to using Poppler via engine abstraction to using mupdf via
| Engine abstraction._ "
|
| Make major changes incrementally.
| rajandatta wrote:
| Just want to come to give props to Sumatra PDF. Lovely product -
| lightweight, fast, portable. Mau not have every feature (not
| saying it does or doesn't - does what I need) but does a lot
| really well. Highly recommended.
| michaelhoffman wrote:
| I love SumatraPDF. I use Acrobat Reader for most stuff, but while
| working on TeX documents SumatraPDF is invaluable because it:
|
| - is fast AF
|
| - supports SyncTeX
|
| - doesn't unnecessarily lock the files it has open
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah it's pretty cool. I use it as a pdf/epub/etc reader in for
| calibre (which manages books/comics/etc)
| jenkstom wrote:
| So is that Kowalczyk's Law of Software Design? "Small or fast,
| pick both."
| tanto wrote:
| When I open PDFs I often want to edit the filename to adjust it
| to the content. SumatraPDF is awesome and opposed to Adobe Reader
| and other PDF readers it does not take an exclusive lock on the
| PDF file so you can edit its filename. The fact that it is
| extremely fast is another big benefit.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I sometimes work with Paged Media CSS, I'll often need to
| generate a file multiple times after editing the CSS to see if
| it accomplished what I wanted. With Sumatra PDF it instantly
| updates the file when the new version is generated, it's
| awesome.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It's amazing to see the drive of "I know what I want to make and
| I do it the way I want" carry the project for so long. More than
| any development ideology just having the passion to continue
| working on whatever it is you're doing is an extremely powerful
| force for creating useful software. And SumatraPDF is definitely
| useful software, has been for a long time.
|
| "ideology doesn't matter as much as doing" being said the syntax
| valid semantic invalid error at the end of this excerpt in the
| section on extensive tests being overrated gave me a chuckle:
|
| > Dogma is powerful. Sometimes in my corporate life I felt like
| writing tests was just going through motion. Maybe we should
| spend more time writing code instead, I though?
|
| In all seriousness I agree though. In a project where you write
| the majority of the code it is possible to overdo tests in a way
| that you are wasting more time than you're saving yourself and in
| a passion project efficiency isn't always as important as
| interest anyways.
| optionist wrote:
| I registered a HN account just to comment on this. Thank you so
| much for writing this small yet powerful software. I used it in
| grad school when I needed to write paper with latex and compile
| it with pdflatex. 2 features are killers: 1. auto reload the
| newly generated pdf. 2. double click on pdf and it jumps to the
| corresponding place in the tex file. It was such an productivity
| booster. Thank you!
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| It's one of the best epub readers for Windows.
| quyleanh wrote:
| I have been using Sumatra for years and don't know the story
| behind this great app. Thank to dev for such a long journey.
| Loranubi wrote:
| I have been using SumatraPDF on Windows for a long time. After
| opening a PDF file with it for the first time, I never went back
| to Adobe Reader. SumatraPDF is much faster, cleaner and less
| memory hungry.
| robtherobber wrote:
| My comment is bound to be redundant in this thread, but so have
| I. SumatraPDF is an excellent piece of software that has made
| life for countless people easier and without them having to pay
| anything in exchange.
|
| It's as simple as it gets (with a UI), it's fast, robust and
| reliable. I wish governments would set aside some generous
| budgets for this type of projects that are consistently useful
| and reliable, like they do for arts and education (well, some
| governments).
| tolai wrote:
| Same experience. Great piece of software, been using it for a
| long time as well. THANK YOU SO MUCH !
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| Same experience here too! It's one of the first apps that I
| install on every new system.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Other readers likely have this feature, but one I love is that
| you can re-generate the PDF out from under it and it reloads
| the new content. As someone writing in LaTeX on emacs and
| constantly re-generating the PDF, this is very helpful.
| grungegun wrote:
| Plus, when you double click a spot in a pdf you generated
| with latex, Sumatra opens up your default .txt application
| with the line highlighted.
| evanbubniak wrote:
| Yes! I often write LaTeX in vim under WSL with this setup and
| it works pleasantly. VimTeX re-compiles whenever I save the
| document, launches SumatraPDF on the first compilation, and
| SumatraPDF hot-reloads it without any extra effort on my
| part. I'm pleased to see a native Windows program and VimTeX
| under WSL interoperate so well.
| Markoff wrote:
| tried it for some time, but quickly moved away since it had
| problems with rendering, comments and I need to highlight and
| annotate PDFs, also ocasionally I sign there documents with my
| transparent GIF signature, I don't think sumatra can do any of
| these
|
| but I am adobe hater, didn't use their software for decades,
| now I am using for years Foxit reader
| marktangotango wrote:
| > comments and I need to highlight and annotate PDFs, also
| ocasionally I sign there documents with my transparent GIF
| signature, I don't think sumatra can do any of these
|
| Indeed, it's a "viewer" not an "editor" :)
| krylon wrote:
| I agree 100%, it is awesome. Also, it remembers the position in
| a file.
| Leparamour wrote:
| Same experience here.
|
| It's one the first programs I install on every new system and
| have recommended it to friends for years.
|
| If any of the programmers involved read here: Thank you very
| much for all the hard work. It was worth it.
| criddell wrote:
| I use the PDF viewer built into Firefox and Edge. Am I
| missing out on something?
| parsecs wrote:
| It's very noticeably slower and computationally intensive
| compared to Sumatra (or Okular) with larger files like
| 1000-page long reference manuals as well as massive
| textbooks, both of which I frequently use. On web browsers,
| it generally takes a whole few seconds to load if you
| scroll quickly past a few pages.
|
| I guess if you don't need to jump around in big pdfs,
| Firefox viewer is perfectly fine.
| [deleted]
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Totally agree. SumatraPDF is an awesome reader. Been using it
| for many years.
| 41209 wrote:
| Does it work for editing.
|
| Right now I'm paying $15 a month for primarily the privilege of
| editing PDFs. It seems every time I switch jobs, or have to send
| some documents, I need Adobe PDF writer.
| Krasnol wrote:
| No it doesn't edit but he's thinking about implementing it.
|
| And yeah...editing on Windows is a pain if you don't want to
| spend money.
| 41209 wrote:
| If he wants to put up a donation link with that as a goal
| I'll give 20$ right now
| Krasnol wrote:
| https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/backers
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I used Sumatra on a very old Windows laptop a decade ago, and
| became a fan because it was so lightweight that it rendered
| documents quickly, even on outdated hardware.
| supz_k wrote:
| One of the pains of moving from windows to a Mac was not having
| Sumatra. I've been using it on Windows for so long. I have tried
| many options on Mac, but they just doesn't feel "right" (too many
| options in viewers like Acrobat, too less features compared to
| Sumatra in others). Any plans to create a mac version?
| soegaard wrote:
| PDF Expert
| supz_k wrote:
| Tried. Good. Being used to Sumatra feels like missing the
| organising of documents, and features like "Sign" are really
| distracting.
| calvin_ wrote:
| I'm perfectly happy with Preview.app; I'm curious what's not
| working for you?
| ianbooker wrote:
| I cannot compare it to SumatraPDF, but I really enjoy Skim:
| https://skim-app.sourceforge.io/
| supz_k wrote:
| Thanks this looks promising.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-27 23:03 UTC)