Zathura vs GrafX2

Zathura is fast and can open a pdf file almost instantly.

Inferface is clean and shows only a small statusbar.

You can browse files via keyboard, using keyboard commands similar to vim (text editor).

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).

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

• recolor-darkcolor
• recolor-lightcolor
• recolor-keephue
• recolor-reverse-video
  (see manpage zathurarc)
  Also, proper dark mode: colors are grayscaled not inverted.

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.

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

See man page "zathura".

https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/
But unlike qpdfview search will only operate on one tab instance.

GrafX2 is scriptable using the Lua language, which can be used to automate tasks and add new functionality to it. The script library features advanced color reduction and enhancement tools, palette analysis, and much more.

GrafX2 supports many file formats, including the popular gif and png, but also importing and exporting from deluxe paint, degas elite, and various other editors using custom formats.

GrafX2 is totally free to use, copy, and modify. It's available on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Haiku, AROS, MorphOS, SkyOS, Syllable, Mint, and a few more systems. Basically anything is supported by the SDL library.

GraphX2 being based on older 256 bitmap software has inherited some tricks that modern pixel editors do not have . One of them being the ability to cycle color palette and produce animations and effects with it.

You can create gradients from one color to another, work in either RGB or HSL color space, save and load palettes, sort and organize palettes, and even work on "color cycling" images.

The program has a basic support for animation using frames in newer versions. Graphics can be cloned and copied between frames and changed slightly.
See here how to animate with GrapfX2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnq6zBZOqoM

Theme UI style can easily be changed from settings including buttons and colors.

The program is able to enforce the pixel constraints of old machines (C64, ZX Spectrum, Apple II, Game Boy Color, etc.)
For example, in ZX Spectrum mode, only 2 different colors can be used in a 8x8 pixel block.