djvu is better than pdf because the software doesnt suck! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Deactivated-1
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 09:46:37 am
content: djvu is awesome! main reason: WinDJView, software to read djvu files is incredible, it's the best0 fuss, very intuitive UI, every thing you would want can be done in the settings.Lightning fast zoom, no problems with it taking years to load a single page after you zoomed in like you often do with pdfs. You also get buttons to fit the page vertically or horizontallyAll the modes like side-by-side are right there at the top, no need to go into a menu"Back" buttonAlso a select tool, crop out a part and export it as high resolution png or whatever, Or zoom into it, Or highlight it, Or add a bookmark, Or copy it ofc.And recently I was looking at a djvu file and I wanted to like screenshot the page, out of curiosity I right clicked, and guess what prompt there was... "Export page...", exporting the page in high resolution as a png or gif or jpeg, etc. There's also "page information" which shows details about what images are on the page in what resolution.I mean you don't get anything like this with pdf's... too bad it's not very common to find djvu files.Such a shame most software isn't thought out and user friendly like this is, the world would truly be a better place if everything was like that.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 10:38:51 am
content: Quote from: ELS122 on August 24, 2023, 09:46:37 amThe problem isn't PDF, the problem is that you aren't using Linux. The Okular PDF reader (just to give 1 example out of many PDF readers available for Linux) can do all the things you mention.

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 10:41:23 am
content: well, no problem here on macos as pdf are highly integrated to the operating system, and for 20 years......and MacDJView is looking as a last century app ...

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 11:03:05 am
content: QuoteActually, the problem is likely the use of Acrobat rather than the OS. There are many alternative PDF clients for Windows that are good as well, you know. (Although, apparently you don't.)

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 11:11:47 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 24, 2023, 10:38:51 amOkular also has its issues, but its developers are very responsive. I came across a few issues with Okular a few years ago, reported them, and days later they were resolved. I still use Okular. I haven't found anything better, as long as you aren't doing form filling.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 11:21:59 am
content: If you are condemned to use windows you can try Sumatra PDF:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumatra_PDF?useskin=vectorEdit: Okular is also available for windows:https://okular.kde.org/download/

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 01:45:12 pm
content: https://pdf-xchange.eu/pdf-xchange-editor/index.htmAnd Okular looks good. Not as good as pdfXchange in some respects but a hell of a lot better than AcrobatThanks for pointing out the Windows version, Karel. Pity it's Microsoft Store but with a bit of perseverance you can get around that (and it then works on W7).

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 02:03:23 pm
content: I like SumatraPDF because it's a true portable application and doesn't go messing around in the Windows Registry. Just unzip it somewhere that makes sense, and run it. It can open your DjVu files and a lot of others. I think it covers most of what you want except the full page export. I dunno, never had a need for that. You can control+click and drag to select anything and copy it to the clipboard though.

author: mendip_discovery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 03:03:45 pm
content: Quote from: ELS122 on August 24, 2023, 09:46:37 amThere is some pretty good programs for PDF, acrobat will be hated just because its the market leader.Quote from: ELS122 on August 24, 2023, 09:46:37 amWell PDF was the right format at the right time so they have the market share. Sorry but 99% of computers have the ability to read PDF where as djvu is just another format trying to get into a market already covered.Quote from: ELS122 on August 24, 2023, 09:46:37 amMeh, if it was people would still complain. Take any programming language as an example.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 03:28:59 pm
content: Quote from: mendip_discovery on August 24, 2023, 03:03:45 pmOr even better: PCB design software. I don't think there is any kind of software for which there are so many different packages as for doing PCB design. And they all work different with people loving and hating each package for a good reason.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 03:32:01 pm
content: I have been using SumatraPDF, and before that Foxit, for viewing and printing PDF files.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 10:00:24 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 24, 2023, 10:38:51 amOkular is available on Windows (I think I already gave a link before, but they've changed things around a bit.)https://binary-factory.kde.org/job/Okular_Release_win64/lastStableBuild/artifact/Works plenty fine on Windows.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2023, 10:14:33 pm
content: How quaint,having to install 3rd party software to read and print pdf's.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2023, 06:33:30 am
content: Quote from: ELS122 on August 24, 2023, 10:33:17 pmAs what? PDF or plain text?For manipulating pdf (extracting or concatenating pages of one or more documents) use PDFtk:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDFtk?useskin=vectorCode:pdftk input.pdf cat 152 output output.pdf152 = pagenumberpdftk input.pdf cat 152-168 output output.pdf152-168 = page rangepdftk input.pdf cat 150 145 152 output output.pdfonly pages 150, 145 and 152pdftk input.pdf cat 10-20~15 25 output output.pdfonly pages 10 to 20 and 25 but not 15rotate clockwise:pdftk input.pdf cat 1-endeast output output.pdfrotate anti-clockwise:pdftk input.pdf cat 1-endwest output output.pdfIf you want to select and save one page as text in Okular, go to Edit -> Select all text on current page and paste it intowhatever you like.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2023, 07:46:46 am
content: QuoteIf you bother to check that page you will see that the free version, after the evaluation period, is fully functional but adds a watermark. For reading that's a non-issue.Support is good. I use it for copy editing and the stamp feature is much better that any of the other editor/readers I've looked at, which is good because stamps are 90% of the work in that scenario. There is one aspect of stamps that gets up my nose, but even my SO (for whom I subcontract) doesn't notice it so it's a very niche issue. Nevertheless, I contacted support and (after being kept informed on progress) it is apparently fixed in the next release. Since I expected the usual first line brushoff, I am impressed with both the speed of response and ownership of the ticket.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2023, 07:56:25 am
content: Quote from: ELS122 on August 25, 2023, 07:05:12 amUsing the commandline is faster and lowers the risk of rsi.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2023, 08:55:46 am
content: 99% of the world uses PDF for document distribution. Get over it. You can have the best djvu reader in the world, but that means nothing.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2023, 10:10:54 am
content: QuoteThis is the crux of it - it's a done deal. Send a djvu document and 99.9% of people will reply saying either the file is corrupt or can you send it in a proper format. No-one has to think about how to deal with pdf.As a similar example, look at zip vs rar and any other 'better' compression. If djvu is compelling (and the format has to be, not a single instance of a client) then perhaps in 10 years it will be where rar is now compared to zip.

author: mendip_discovery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2023, 10:34:26 am
content: Quote from: ELS122 on August 24, 2023, 09:22:05 pmI don't hate it, I have used it since getting windows '95. For the past 20 years I have had Acrobat, not just the reader. There are shittier programs out there.Quote from: ELS122 on August 24, 2023, 09:22:05 pm

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2023, 02:20:39 pm
content: Quote from: Gyro on August 25, 2023, 08:55:46 amThe most interesting aspect of this thread is it reminded me that djvu exists. I haven't seen a thing about it for years.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2023, 03:26:08 pm
content: Coincidence: today's obituaryhttps://www.cnn.com/2023/08/21/business/adobe-cofounder-john-warnock-death/index.html

author: mwb1100
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2023, 04:59:50 pm
content: Firefox acts as a very nice PDF reader (probably other browsers too). I also likeSTDU Viewer, a free reader with a nice tabbed document interface, no nags. The only shortcoming is that it crashes more often than I like (but infrequently enough that I still use it most of the time). It's no longer developed/maintained so the crashes will never be addressed.The tabbed doc UI is what made me move to it so many years ago.STDU handles several other document formats (including djvu - so this post is actually on topic), but I don't know how well it handles them since I'm pretty much PDF-only.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2023, 11:29:18 pm
content: STDU Viewer seemed nice on a quick look, but fails to open pdf files created on my Boox Note Air. Other clients open them, though.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 03:58:16 am
content: Quote from: ELS122 on August 24, 2023, 10:33:17 pmI'm not sure I understood your point. Can you elaborate on what you want to achieve?Do you mean you like to be able to save individual pages? (Like, say, saving one or a number of pages of a given PDF to a PDF file?)In that case, no, it doesn't allow you to do this as far as I've looked.But you can always use a virtual PDF printer to achieve the same result. So, yeah. Or use a PDF editor (not viewer), as doing this is more in the editing category.

author: mwb1100
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 05:08:53 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 24, 2023, 10:00:24 pmThanks for this pointer! Works great for me so far and it supports tabbed documents. For some reason I didn't think it did.I might have found a reason to move on from STDU.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 05:23:26 am
content: Quote from: mwb1100 on August 26, 2023, 05:08:53 amYep, I knew Okular from Linux but only found out there was a working Windows build a few months ago. Before that I was mainly using PDF Xchange which was fine, but the more recent versions tended to be more and more bloated.Okular also supports digital signatures, annotations. And, it can automatically reload an open PDF that has changed on disk - something that many other viewers do not support. That's pretty great when you are working on a document and want to see the PDF output. For instance when using LaTeX.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 06:10:46 am
content: Quote from: ELS122 on August 26, 2023, 12:57:58 amRegarding Notepad++, I prefer Kate:https://kate-editor.org/

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 06:49:33 am
content: I'd rather have EPUB instead of pdf or djvu but I'm aware of the limitations and differences.. pdf is design with printing in mind, with page sizes and all that, epub has limited support for that, it's meant to re-flow, scale with display size, to read books on whatever screen you have ...EPUB is a simple zip file that contains xhtml and images and optional fonts and media. If you don't have a viewer, you can still open the zip and load the html file in a browser and read the text.but it's much easier to decode compared to djvu's arithmetic coding and odd image compression algorithms and pdf has so many extra things added.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 04:39:07 pm
content: Quote from: ELS122 on August 26, 2023, 12:57:58 amHuh? Have you seen notepad? You really think its hard to get something like that wrong? I know its from MS, where the key expertise is crappy software, but still. Most of the world's editors are extremely annoying. The scintilla editor behind notepad++ is pretty well thought out.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 07:57:44 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on August 26, 2023, 06:10:46 amYes it's pretty good. Also a KDE app like Okular.I mostly use Geany, but otherwise Kate.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 08:55:46 pm
content: Must admit one of the things i missed the most when jumping to linux was paint.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 09:57:39 pm
content: I miss Paint Shop Pro. It's always GIMP you get with Linux, which is about 10x more complicated than I need.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 10:05:05 pm
content: Paint Shop is still with us; current version from Corel is "Paint Shop Pro 2023 Ultimate"https://www.paintshoppro.com/en/products/paintshop-pro/ultimate/?sourceid=psp2022-xx-ppc_brkws&x-vehicle=ppc_brkws&trial=big&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=psp-dd-all-adwordsppc&utm_content=132063878599&utm_term=paint%20shop%20pro%20ultimate&utm_id=1696212657&gad=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI69Tsjar7gAMVeiezAB3xdwHVEAAYASABEgJSbPD_BwE

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 11:08:22 pm
content: I use SumatraPDF for the regular viewing and Foxit 9.2 for more advanced tasks: it does not have the bloating of latter versions and it is still pretty functional, with its very useful "PDF printer" that allows me to export single or multiple pages with no fuss.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2023, 11:47:17 pm
content: Quotebog standard,as included since windows 2.0 ms paint,simple and great for a quick sketch with the added advantage you can attach the image to a document without digging out your scanner.It was also handy for removing the tags on digital camera pictures.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2023, 04:52:15 am
content: Quote from: ELS122 on August 26, 2023, 10:40:00 pmIndeed. Couple of hours and job's a good 'un.And yet... no-one who has agreed the UI is crap has actually attempted that, never mind managed to do it. Perhaps none of them has realised it's open source and therefore a piece of cake to fix.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2023, 07:20:39 am
content: If you'r not condemned to use windows, there's also KolourPaint:http://www.kolourpaint.org/about-product-comparison.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KolourPaint?useskin=vector

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2023, 11:13:07 pm
content: https://okular.kde.org/download/QuoteWindows 10 LTSC Enterprise 2019 does not have an appstore and I have no intentions of ever installing that rubbish.Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 24, 2023, 10:00:24 pmThank you.

author: Zoli
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2023, 06:22:26 am
content: Quote from: rdl on August 26, 2023, 09:57:39 pmI'm still using PSP7.04; I don't know any other program able to open a 40MB TIFF for edit under 1s...

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2023, 07:51:38 am
content: I am sure this is a coincidence...I downloaded Okular and ran the standalone under Sandboxie (which is what I normally do to avoid polluting my PC with stuff I may not like, but allowing it to work in a real environment). Seemed OK but Okular didn't seem to bring anything to my party, so removed it. However, via a circuitous route, I found out it could display markdown properly - most other markdown-aware things display it as raw weird stuff with the proper display as a separate 'preview', so this was attractive. Accordingly I then ran the installer version of Okular.Didn't seem to work right and complained that it couldn't write to some file because of permissions, and then Bitdefender popped up and killed it. WTF! Long story short, my TheJournal executable was banished from my PC, Miranda and Waterfox lost their profiles and other bad things happened.Seemed to be a registry delete-fest too. Fortunately, blasting back my C drive en bloc from an image sorted it all out, and again running the standalone Okular in a sandbox was fine. As was running the installer version in a VM.Highly unlikely Okular downloaded from KDE is malware (which was the Bitdefender report), but in several years that's the first time Bitdefender has twisted its knickers so messily. I am putting it down to coincidence but thought it worth mentioning if it encourages people to ensure they have regular backups.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2023, 08:45:32 am
content: Anti-malware creates more problems than it resolves.They are not effective, very unreliable, consume resources, slowdown your pc and can mess things up.The biggest virus is the person in front of the pc...

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2023, 10:50:20 am
content: Quote from: ELS122 on August 28, 2023, 09:21:25 amI believe most windows pc's are infected in one way or another, we just don't know it:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/security/uefi-rootkits/msg4327426/#msg4327426

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2023, 12:43:57 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on August 28, 2023, 08:45:32 amIt's like seatbelts and crash helmets - pain in the arse and a drag, and if you're a careful drive you might think you don't really need them. But we are human and can unintentionally screw up in a major way. These things are intended to be the last change to deal with an issue after the human has failed to avert it.Malware on computers is a real thing. I am careful and circumspect about what I allow on my PC and where I visit, and yet I've sometimes narrowly escaped being scammed or running dodgy shit. In fact, Ihaverun dodgy shit but it was on my phone where there is no backstop.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2023, 01:17:00 pm
content: Quote from: ELS122 on August 28, 2023, 12:48:03 pmY'all are thinking way too clever. All it takes is one innocuous app that just takes a look around and deletes any data it finds. Doesn't matter if you never run as root - just the data it can find for you, as a humble user, would be bad news if it got deleted. Or, worse, corrupted so you don't notice until you next take a look at it.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2023, 01:40:47 pm
content: Another reason to not use a desktop OS that has big marketshare and thus is more interesting for malware to target.I believe that approach is more effective in practice than the best and the greatest anti-malware protection software.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2023, 02:35:18 pm
content: Pardon me for being blunt, but that's dumb. Things people like tend to be popular, so you're basically saying you'd rather pass up the good stuff so you can be ignored. There are good reasons to use something other than Windows, but "it has too much market share" isn't one of them.