I discovered Okular late in my dissertation-writing. I was pretty thrilled to discover that it could display annotations made with Acrobat. This was my advisor's preferred way of interacting, since I was somehow not able to interest him in learning git or LaTeX. At the time it was far better than evince. I've also found that it does a better job with big complicated pdfs produced by graphviz.
My New Favorite Tool for Reviewing PDFs: Okular
41–50 of 69 posts
Re: My New Favorite Tool for Reviewing PDFs: Okular
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
What can you possibly object to about how it runs on linux? Its wholly reasonable that kde apps all build on the same foundation rather than each one bundle their own version of libraries. If the entire rest of your desktop happens to be based on gnome for example you end up with *doctor evil expression" HUNDREDS OF MB of extra libraries once the first time you install a kde app. Perish the thought.
Did I say something in my comment that makes it sound like Okular doesn't run amazingly well on Linux? I was talking about if you run it on Windows or MacOS.
> First, if you like Okular, you're stuck if you want to run on any
other platform. It doesn't work on mobile, it doesn't work on the
web, doesn't work on Linux, MacOS or Windows
You did directly say it doesn't run on Linux. Even with your qualification I don't think that's fair. It requires the KDE libs, yes, but that's not really a high cost apart from some disk space. Apart from that, it obviously runs perfectly well even in another desktop environment. I even use it on my Chromebook.
Re: My New Favorite Tool for Reviewing PDFs: Okular
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
You found that you had to download too much bloat to use Okular so you made an Electron app? Im pretty sure you dont have to download all of KDE to use one of its apps, just the package manager and the libraries Okular uses.
"apt install okular" requires an extra 195 packages and 194MB of space on a Ubuntu machine I have handy. It's not all of KDE, but...
Somehow I don't find 194 MB that bad if the proposed alternative suggests a 197 MB download as "probably easiest to install", but why let details like that let an opportunity to promote your project over someone elses go to waste... If someone with a Debian box handy wants to try how much in dependencies the .deb pulls in...?
Re: My New Favorite Tool for Reviewing PDFs: Okular
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
You found that you had to download too much bloat to use Okular so you made an Electron app? Im pretty sure you dont have to download all of KDE to use one of its apps, just the package manager and the libraries Okular uses.
"apt install okular" requires an extra 195 packages and 194MB of space on a Ubuntu machine I have handy. It's not all of KDE, but...
The snap package linked in GP is also ~200MB. If you're the kind of person to be frugal with your hard drive, that's cool. But I don't think an electron app is the answer.
Re: My New Favorite Tool for Reviewing PDFs: Okular
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did I say something in my comment that makes it sound like Okular doesn't run amazingly well on Linux? I was talking about if you run it on Windows or MacOS.
> First, if you like Okular, you're stuck if you want to run on any other platform. It doesn't work on mobile, it doesn't work on the web, doesn't work on Linux , MacOS or Windows You did directly say it doesn't run on Linux. Even with your qualification I don't think that's fair. It requires the KDE libs, yes, but that's not really a high cost apart from some disk space. Apart from that, it obviously runs perfectly…
AH!!! ok.. definitely my fault. I meant to say it's not really cross-platform and doesn't run on all platforms.
This was a big requirement for me - the ability to move between all platforms.
Re: My New Favorite Tool for Reviewing PDFs: Okular
#46Okular is actually the reason I created Polar: https://getpolarized.io/ Well, one of the reasons. First, if you like Okular, you're stuck if you want to run on any other platform. It doesn't work on mobile, it doesn't work on the web, doesn't work on Linux, MacOS or Windows [1] Additionally, there were pretty severe bugs when I used it and there were 1-2 long outstanding bugs regarding annotations that weren't fixed…
I can't edit my comment but I screwed up and made it sound like Okular doesn't run well on Linux.
It does! It runs great on Linux. I meant to say it's not really cross-platform.
I just re-evaluated and I can't figure out how to download Okular for Windows/MacOS.
They have a Windows + MacOS page but they don't seem to actually have downloads.
Re: My New Favorite Tool for Reviewing PDFs: Okular
#47Okular is actually the reason I created Polar: https://getpolarized.io/ Well, one of the reasons. First, if you like Okular, you're stuck if you want to run on any other platform. It doesn't work on mobile, it doesn't work on the web, doesn't work on Linux, MacOS or Windows [1] Additionally, there were pretty severe bugs when I used it and there were 1-2 long outstanding bugs regarding annotations that weren't fixed…
Wow! Thanks for the self-promotion :-)
Polar looks perfect for an academic environment. From a quick look the only thing missing is some kind of bibliography/doi integration.
Re: My New Favorite Tool for Reviewing PDFs: Okular
#48> You have so many rounds of back and forth on collateral that it’s clear you don’t have strategic alignment and it’s spilling over into stifling execution.
What does this sentence even mean? Could someone ELI5 it to me?
Re: My New Favorite Tool for Reviewing PDFs: Okular
#49Okular is actually the reason I created Polar: https://getpolarized.io/ Well, one of the reasons. First, if you like Okular, you're stuck if you want to run on any other platform. It doesn't work on mobile, it doesn't work on the web, doesn't work on Linux, MacOS or Windows [1] Additionally, there were pretty severe bugs when I used it and there were 1-2 long outstanding bugs regarding annotations that weren't fixed…
You found that you had to download too much bloat to use Okular so you made an Electron app? Im pretty sure you dont have to download all of KDE to use one of its apps, just the package manager and the libraries Okular uses.
The Electron bloat of Polar buys you much better cross-platform features than the KDE bloat of Okular.
Okular is ok as long as you run only linux. In theory you could run it also on macOS or Windows, but you have to jump through the hoops. That's not optimal for a productivity application.
Re: My New Favorite Tool for Reviewing PDFs: Okular
#50This is a terribly written article. Needs some serious editing.
"You have so many rounds of back and forth on collateral that it’s clear you don’t have strategic alignment and it’s spilling over into stifling execution. Hate to say it, but the tools aren’t the problem here."
What does this even mean???