When comparing Zathura vs Calibre, the Slant community recommends Calibre for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop readers?” Calibre is ranked 1st while Zathura is ranked 2nd. The most important reason people chose Calibre is:
Features include metadata editing and downloading, coverpage downloading., book tagging and categorization, webpage-to-ebook converter for popular websites, etc. Lots of plugins available to extend functionality.
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 Powerful book management software, very customizable and scriptable
Features include metadata editing and downloading, coverpage downloading., book tagging and categorization, webpage-to-ebook converter for popular websites, etc. Lots of plugins available to extend functionality.
Pro Cross-platform
Calibre is available for Linux, OS X, and Windows, 32-bit or 64-bit.
Pro Open Source
Pro Portable
Calibre has an optional portable build that can be stored on external media along with the users library. It can then be opened from the external media on any windows device.
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 Average, non-power users might find the interface somewhat daunting
The interface, while functional is not the most attractive or intuitive which may put some people off and discourage their use.