When comparing Zathura vs (Spac)emacs with pdf-tools, 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 (Spac)emacs with pdf-tools is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Zathura is:
Zathura is fast and can open a pdf file almost instantly.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion 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 Extensible, customizable and scriptable
Being a Emacs plugin you can use elisp to customize, script and extend pdf-tools.
Pro Can treat multiple PDF's as one big PDF
Pro Nice search using Occur
Occur creates a list all lines matching a regexp or string in one or more pdfs and allows easy jumping between them. Really helpful when searching long documents like datasheets.
Pro Synctex support
Pro Easy installation
Although installing requires little more work than stand-alone readers, pdf-tools is very easily installed via Emacs 'list-packages' or even easier as a layer in Spacemacs
Pro Convenient default keyboard shortcuts
Uses emacs or vim-style navigation (via spacemacs/evil. Shortcut overview via transient state "SPC m .")
Pro Automatically exported notes
Notes can be exported automatically to and backlinked from an external org notes file using the org-noter or interleave package.
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 Only for power users
Handy only for people that want good notes/annotation management. Otherwise using any other pdf-reader is recommended.
Con Too cumbersome for quick reading or annotating
Although setting up pdf-tools is not too much work. For quick reading using some default pdf-viewer like evince/okular/zathura is recommended. Also, except for the auto-export feature (with org-noter/interleave package), other editors like e.g. pdf-XChange Editor (via wine), Okular or mupdf have even more powerful annotation features.