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Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app (2021)

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Re: Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app (2021)

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it sad? Every time I see a piece of software that provides a lot of value and it’s not focused on money-making (ublock for example) it gives me a warm feeling.

Please forward your warm feelings to his bank account. Perhaps he can live off it

I really forgot for a second where I was, thanks for the reminder.

Re: Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app (2021)

#42
post #35
post #2

I use SumatraPDF almost every day and I love it. It is very rare these days to have an application that is all of the following: - Small and fast - Hand-crafted for a particular platform - Not bloated with oddly specific UI menus and configuration settings It has one job and it does it very well. Thank you for it.

> It is very rare these days to have an application that is all of the following... Yep. On Windows there's: - IrfanView for image editing - foobar2000 for mp3s They've been on my "must have" install list for ~20 years. There's also Ditto for managing multiple clipboard entries. It's a good example of how a small open source tool with an optimized UI for 1 thing ends up being 100x better than the same feature MS trie…

I add 7-Zip and SpeedCrunch to the list

Re: Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app (2021)

#43
post #2

I use SumatraPDF almost every day and I love it. It is very rare these days to have an application that is all of the following: - Small and fast - Hand-crafted for a particular platform - Not bloated with oddly specific UI menus and configuration settings It has one job and it does it very well. Thank you for it.

I haven't touched a Windows system in a few years, but when I worked as a Windows admin / programmer, SumatraPDF was my PDF viewer of choice. It does what it's supposed to do, does it well, and it doesn't get in my way while doing so. No subscription or cloud bullshit. And like you said, it's really small and fast. To top it all off, it runs without an installer, you just drop the executable somewhere and you're good to go; so people can use it without having Administrator access or bothering / arguing with their IT department.

Re: Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app (2021)

#46
post #35
post #2

I use SumatraPDF almost every day and I love it. It is very rare these days to have an application that is all of the following: - Small and fast - Hand-crafted for a particular platform - Not bloated with oddly specific UI menus and configuration settings It has one job and it does it very well. Thank you for it.

> It is very rare these days to have an application that is all of the following... Yep. On Windows there's: - IrfanView for image editing - foobar2000 for mp3s They've been on my "must have" install list for ~20 years. There's also Ditto for managing multiple clipboard entries. It's a good example of how a small open source tool with an optimized UI for 1 thing ends up being 100x better than the same feature MS trie…

In your opinion what advantages does Ditto have over win+V? I've only used Ditto very briefly but didn't immediately notice anything too wildly different from the built-in implementation.

Re: Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app (2021)

#47
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe’s goals for Acrobat Reader are almost diametrically opposed to yours.

You would think "reading PDFs without annoying the user" should be the first and golden goal. So much software in the modern era has horrible UX because the vendor's goals aren't aligned with the users' goals, where really the users' goals should be the only thing you care about as a company. At my $DAYJOB you could fire 80% of the R&D staff and refocus efforts onto what our users actually want, and we would probably…

You'd hope so, but I'm guessing their actual top priority is making Acrobat look cool in passing to the execs that they want to choose it for their company signed-business-document needs.

These execs don't use Acrobat themselves.

Re: Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app (2021)

#48
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very rare these days to have an application that is all of the following... Yep. On Windows there's: - IrfanView for image editing - foobar2000 for mp3s They've been on my "must have" install list for ~20 years. There's also Ditto for managing multiple clipboard entries. It's a good example of how a small open source tool with an optimized UI for 1 thing ends up being 100x better than the same feature MS trie…

In your opinion what advantages does Ditto have over win+V? I've only used Ditto very briefly but didn't immediately notice anything too wildly different from the built-in implementation.

For a multi-clipboard manager I'm looking for:

    - Configure hot keys to bring up the clipboard selector (I use CTRL + Alt + V)
    - Quickly select a clipboard item via hot key, arrow keys or mouse
    - Search through the list of clipboard items immediately
    - Configure how many items get saved and when they expire
    - Ability to paste in plain-text as a separate hot key
Ditto hits all of those marks. Overall it feels like it was built by a person who actively uses it.

Re: Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open source Windows app (2021)

#49

I agree with his points about treating it like commercial software (in terms of having a website/screenshots/etc) but paradoxically the more professional an open source site looks, the more I assume there's going to be a catch. When you find a utility which has a site that looks like Richard Stallman's website you breathe easily because it's unlikely there's going to be any time-limited trial version, subscription mo…

PDF readers are probably the opposite for the target demographic, given it's for Windows. It's a great reader last time I used it.

But agreed, many forget certain programs/tools/etc don't need to be actively to be updated once they just "work". Unless it's been rewritten in Rust, or if it's slightly older Go ;-).

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