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Add to SafariWhen comparing Zathura vs qpdfview, the Slant community recommends Zathura for most people. In the question“What are the best PDF viewers for UNIX-like systems?” Zathura is ranked 3rd while qpdfview is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Zathura is:
Zathura is fast and can open a pdf file almost instantly.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Lightweight
Zathura is fast and can open a pdf file almost instantly.
Pro Clean interface
Inferface is clean and shows only a small statusbar.
Pro Vim bindings
You can browse files via keyboard, using keyboard commands similar to vim (text editor).
Pro Automatic document reloading
Zathura will automatically refresh the view when a document has been modified. (By contrast, Chrome requires a manual refresh and brings you back to the top of the document so that you have to scroll back down).
Pro Default page layout always same and predictable
No unpredictable window opening behavior like Atril. Together with it's easy ways to scroll and zoom, zathura is perfect for fast look through lots of PDFs
Pro Detailed adjustment of dark mode
- recolor-darkcolor
- recolor-lightcolor
- recolor-keephue
- recolor-reverse-video
(see manpage zathurarc)
Also, proper dark mode: colors are grayscaled not inverted.
Pro Deactivation of all GUI elements
Pro Very detailed adjustment of page layout
For example:
- pages-per-row 3 (3 pages next to each other)
- first-page-column 3:1 (for 3 page column layout: first page is on the left)
- page-right-to-left false (2nd and 3rd page are shown right to the 1st)
Unfortunately I haven't found a way yet to map these commands to a key. The ability to prefix a shortcut with a number argument would lend itself perfectly to achieve what I had in mind.
Pro Call userscripts on document
For example:
map <C-l> exec "termite -c ./termite_config --class float -e 'tmux new-session /bin/ranger $(dirname "%")'"
<C-l> opens ranger with directory containing the opened document
Other ideas:
- extract pages
- print pages
Pro Good documentation of configuration options
See man page "zathura".
Pro Multiple tabs via tabbed
https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/
But unlike qpdfview search will only operate on one tab instance.
Pro Low on resources
Pro Reloads on changes instantly
Pro Outline, properties and thumbnail panes
Pro Open multiple pdfs in tabs
qpdfview is a tabbed document viewer.
Pro Allows for some scripting
Opens files in named instances, open files on designated page.
Calling of userscripts on a document is thus far not possible.
Pro Fast search in all opened files
Pro Dark mode
However only inverted colors.
Pro Scale, rotate and fit
Pro Supports TOC-sidebar
Pro Switch tabs with keyboard shortcuts
Pro Continuous and multiple-page layouts
Pro Add highlights and text annotations
Pro DjVu support
Pro Fullscreen and presentation views
Pro PostScript support
Pro Custom background colors
Pro Multiplatform
It is available on any major computer OS.
Pro Deactivation of GUI elements
e.g.:
toggleMenuBar
toggleToolBars
Pro Supports thumbnail preview
Pro Input forms are editable
Cons
Con No annotation support
Con No thumbnail view
Unlike qpdfview, okular and evince, which have it.
Con Input forms are not editable
qpdfview, okular and evince do this.
Con Deadly slow on complex pdf files
Con File information missing page size
Con No multiple mapping of commands
For example:
moveDown=Down
moveLeft=Shift+Left
moveRight=Shift+Right
moveUp=Up
Having two key mappings to execute the moveUp command doesn't seem to be possible.
Con Configuration intended via GUI
There is no explicit documentation of configuration parameters used in qpdfview.conf and shortcuts.conf (those are the most important ones). However the files are editable conveniently, which is of value.
