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

Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by Loranubi on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @03:07AM (#27969491)

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.

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by michaelcampbell on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @09:28AM (#27972140)

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.

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by evanbubniak on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @12:49PM (#27974597)

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.

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by grungegun on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @11:12AM (#27973394)

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.

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by robtherobber on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @07:53AM (#27971333)

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).

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by Leparamour on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @05:10AM (#27970285)

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.

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by criddell on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @11:21AM (#27973511)

I use the PDF viewer built into Firefox and Edge. Am I missing out on something?

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by parsecs on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @11:26AM (#27973586)

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.

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by tolai on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @04:03AM (#27969834)

Same experience. Great piece of software, been using it for a long time as well. THANK YOU SO MUCH !

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by ncpa-cpl on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @02:17PM (#27975665)

Same experience here too! It's one of the first apps that I install on every new system.

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by Markoff on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @11:24AM (#27973558)

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

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by marktangotango on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @11:51AM (#27973877)

> 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" :)

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by b3lvedere on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @05:10AM (#27970287)

Totally agree. SumatraPDF is an awesome reader. Been using it for many years.

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Re:Lessons learned from 15 years of SumatraPDF, an open sour... by krylon on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @08:50AM (#27971776)

I agree 100%, it is awesome. Also, it remembers the position in a file.

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