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SumatraPDF Reader

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Re: SumatraPDF Reader

#211

Post by kjksf »

baz00 wrote: post #203
kjksf wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I wrote SumatraPDF). I agree that Adobe has more features than SumatraPDF. Not necessarily the PDF spec itself - SumatraPDF displays pretty much any PDF you throw at it, just way more options and stuff. And it's not exactly slow. I'm sure the core rendering of PDF pages is same or faster. It's just slow to start. Like very, very, sluggish slow. And it's very visible to users. I don't think it's the features that cau…

I actually have to pay for Adobe because I need the features (signing, annotation, redaction, OCR etc). Does SumatraPDF cover those at all? As for startup speed, it's not really an issue as Adobe just lurks there all day in the taskbar for me at least ready to roll.

In latest version you can annotate (highlight, underline etc.) and create a few other annotation types and move them.

More / better annotation editing, signing, redaction is something I want to do.

OCR - I don't have a good handle on how important that is.

Re: SumatraPDF Reader

#212

Post by Helmut10001 »

Steve44 wrote: post #141
Helmut10001 wrote: post #128

SumatraPDF is among the OSS PDF tools I use. Since Adobe is pushing a more aggressive stance for monetization of Acrobat, I am trying to replace selected PDF workflows with OSS. Here are some of the tools I use. qpdf removing passwords, unlocking PDFs, conversion install in WSL with apt-get install qpdf remove password with qpdf --decrypt --password="" input.pdf output.pdf PDF4QT - Open Source PDF Editing Deleting, S…

For extracting to tables I've been using http://tabula.technology/ for a couple of years. It seems to do a pretty good job even with some fairly complex tables and I've not had any problems with it.

Yes, tabula is the other table extraction tool. I used both and prefer pdfplumber because it is really robust and works well with Jupyter Lab.

Re: SumatraPDF Reader

#213

Post by wolverine876 »

kjksf wrote: post #160
mvonballmo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the retrospective. > And yet I do know that you can write complex, relatively bug free code without tests, because I did it. > I do know that you can write complex, relatively bug free code without anyone looking over your code, because I did it. > If no one uses your app then who cares if it crashes. > If many people use your app and it crashes, they’ll tell you and then you’ll fix it. Those four statements are…

(I wrote that blog post). What I was trying to say is: there's dogma about tests and code reviews. At Google you would get fired for suggesting skipping code review. Even at smaller Silicon Valley companies (smaller == less than 10 devs) it's unthinkable to not do code reviews. I haven't worked outside SV so it might be different. That's the dogma. My point is that maybe we should apply a bit of common sense on top o…

> My point is that maybe we should apply a bit of common sense on top of that.

...

> But maybe those smaller companies don't need to dogmatically review the checkin for a documentation fix.

It's not dogma, it's just the necessities of large groups of people working together. A small organization can use common sense, a function that scales up to (20? 50?). 10,000 people can't operate on common sense; they need another function: rules.

Re: SumatraPDF Reader

#214

Post by wolverine876 »

ykonstant wrote: post #140

I implore all developers of PDF readers to implement sioyek's overview feature[0]. When you hover on a cross-referenced entry, it opens a little preview window with the contents of the reference. It is an absolute game-changer for reading textbooks and technical papers; I cannot overstate its utility. [0] https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek#overview

> When you hover on a cross-referenced entry, it opens a little preview window with the contents of the reference.

Wikipedia does the same thing, but I assume you would know that. What am I misunderstanding?

Also, if it makes your PDF reader execute arbitrary remote code, isn't that a serious risk?

Re: SumatraPDF Reader

#215

Post by TehShrike »

naasking wrote: post #200
mvonballmo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the retrospective. > And yet I do know that you can write complex, relatively bug free code without tests, because I did it. > I do know that you can write complex, relatively bug free code without anyone looking over your code, because I did it. > If no one uses your app then who cares if it crashes. > If many people use your app and it crashes, they’ll tell you and then you’ll fix it. Those four statements are…

> I became increasingly terrified of making changes. That's the main value of automated tests.

I rarely feel like tests make it easier for me to make changes later. Types do give me that feeling pretty reliably, though.

Re: SumatraPDF Reader

#216

Post by systems »

SushiHippie wrote: post #168
PhilippGille wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mention qpdf not available in Chocolatey, but it's available in Scoop, which is another Windows package manager: https://github.com/ScoopInstaller/Main/blob/master/bucket/qp...

For other distributions / OS / package managers see here: https://repology.org/project/qpdf/versions

seem to be available on winget too

   > winget search qpdf
   Name Id        Version Source
   ------------------------------
   QPDF QPDF.QPDF 11.6.3  winget

Re: SumatraPDF Reader

#217

Post by wolverine876 »

kjksf wrote: post #166
dagw wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell is Adobe doing Probably supporting 100% of the PDF spec. plus addressing all those obscure feature requests that 6 companies in this one very niche industry really really need. Sumatra is fantastic and basically the only PDF reader I use on Windows, but it does have maybe 10% of the features Adobe acrobat has. It is however the 10% that that basically everybody needs.

(I wrote SumatraPDF). I agree that Adobe has more features than SumatraPDF. Not necessarily the PDF spec itself - SumatraPDF displays pretty much any PDF you throw at it, just way more options and stuff. And it's not exactly slow. I'm sure the core rendering of PDF pages is same or faster. It's just slow to start. Like very, very, sluggish slow. And it's very visible to users. I don't think it's the features that cau…

> SumatraPDF displays pretty much any PDF you throw at it

I often use PDF applications for documents that I want to keep for decades, including annotations I make. How much can I count on SumatraPDF, or any PDF application, outputting future compatible documents from conversions, annotations, deleting/merging/etc, content editing, etc.? Is there a difference between applications?

My instinct is to play it safe and use Adobe, figuring whatever they do is the de facto standard. But I strongly dislike the applications and all the privacy invasions they impose. (Yes, I'm aware of PDF/A; I'm talking about applications' outputs and not the standards.)

Re: SumatraPDF Reader

#218

Post by wolverine876 »

CodeCompost wrote: post #95
ivraatiems wrote: post #79

Wow, I just installed this for the first time and its performance blows both Adobe Reader (not an achievement) and Foxit (something of an achievement) out of the water! Nice work by these devs. And its install footprint is around 10% of those programs. What the hell is Adobe doing, I wonder, that makes their software so unbearably slow and painful to use?

I got burned by Foxit when they started shipping spyware with it, so I'm hesitant now to try anything else.

Where can I learn about that?

Re: SumatraPDF Reader

#219

Post by justsomehnguy »

emeril wrote: post #185
ed_balls wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

META: What's the best way to convert pdfs to CSV/excel? Any new LLM tool?

abbyy finereader 8.0(!!!) good luck finding it

It's funny what you are downvoted, but FR8 was way better OCRing Office-printer-scanned documents even against the much later versions of FR, I saw the comparison on the same source documents.

> good luck finding it

It's still available on the trackers.

Re: SumatraPDF Reader

#220

Post by wolverine876 »

izacus wrote: post #156
user3939382 wrote: post #23

Bless the heart of whoever looked at the PDF spec and said to themselves, "Nice, I'd like to writer a parser for this."

Having done that, PDF spec is in many ways much saner and better designed than plenty of "APIs" modern JS jockeys create. The original spec is a bit ugly because they were saving bytes in the format (using things like single letters for dictionary keys), but some things are actually quite well thought out (Appearance Streams are great for forward and backward compatibility and are probably no. 1 reason why nothing ma…

> Appearance Streams are great for forward and backward compatibility and are probably no. 1 reason why nothing managed to replace PDF.

I've been wondering why they took that approach. Do you know their original reasoning? And how does it help compatibility?

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