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

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41–50 of 136 posts

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

#41
post #18

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.

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.

>(for valid if regrettable reasons)

Well now you got me curious. Why is that?

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

#42
post #15

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.

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.

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

#44
post #18

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.

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.

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.

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

#45

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.

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.

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

#46
post #2

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.

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.

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.

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

#47

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.

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)

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

#49
post #15

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.

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.

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

#50
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Pinta? Filled the niche for me after switching to Linux.

Pinta uses an older Paint.Net code - https://github.com/PintaProject/Pinta

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.
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