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Add to SafariWhen comparing SoftMaker Office/FreeOffice vs Evince, the Slant community recommends Evince for most people. In the question“What are the best Microsoft Office alternatives?” Evince is ranked 16th while SoftMaker Office/FreeOffice is ranked 20th. The most important reason people chose Evince is:
It isn't immediately obvious how to do this, but the instructions are [here](https://help.gnome.org/users/evince/stable/annotations.html.en). As of 13 June 2018, the icons/screenshots on that page look different than what can be seen under Evince v3.18.2, but the devs have been alerted to this discrepancy, and there are requests they make the finding/using of annotations more intuitive than they are now.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Great interoperability with Microsoft Office
SoftMaker office can open doc(x), xls(x), and ppt(x) files without messing up formatting.
Pro Multi-platform
Works on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android.
Pro Low on dependencies
On Linux it avoids the common widget toolkits which makes it really lightweight compared to other office suites.
Pro Configurable user interface
Includes the possibility to use Ribbons or classical Menus.
Pro EU based company
Follows the the General Data Protection Regulation of the EU.
Pro Has a free version
A free version, called SoftMaker FreeOffice, is available.
FreeOffice is a stripped down version of SoftMaker Office, with less features, templates and interface polish, but it still is feature-packed and with the same excellent import and export filters that enable opening/saving Microsoft Office formats faithfully.
Pro Free technical support
If you face any issues, you can always use the technical support by developer SoftMaker, it's free.
Pro Documentation
Even the FreeOffice version includes a Handbook in PDF.
Pro EPUB export included
You can create high-quality e-books in EPUB format easily.
Pro Integration of Zotero
Especially important for academic use: SM Office has a great working connector to Zotero for the direct insertion of citations.
Pro Free for teachers
The regular paid version is free for teachers.
Pro Great amount of advanced features
Compared to alternatives like OnlyOffice and WPS, really important advanced features especially for compatibility with Excel.
Pro Can annotate a pdf
It isn't immediately obvious how to do this, but the instructions are here.
As of 13 June 2018, the icons/screenshots on that page look different than what can be seen under Evince v3.18.2, but the devs have been alerted to this discrepancy, and there are requests they make the finding/using of annotations more intuitive than they are now.
Pro Search results list
Click/tap the magnifying class in the top bar.
Pro Good SEARCH
Evince remained my preferred viewer due to the excellent presentation of results in the whole document when performing a search. It is so good, that it makes me tolerate the silly "hamburger" (CSD) foolishness.
Pro Link preview on hover
Evince shows a popup with the preview of the target of links in the same document. This is extremely useful e.g. for links to the bibliography or for references to definitions/propositions/equations in math texts.
Pro Free and open source software
Pro Can find a word in a pdf
Pro Supports touchpad gestures
Pro Good integration with Gnome desktop
Pro Supports touch interaction
Supports touch, including drag and pinch to zoom.
Pro Can play embedded video
To my knowlegde, the only PDF reader on Linux that can play embeded video (unfortunately not in presentation mode, which is a major drawdack).
Cons
Con The regular paid version is not free for students as it is for teachers
For students to use it, there needs to be a free student license for the regular (with . docx support) version.
Con Proprietary software
Although some versions/programs are free to download, they're all proprietary licenses utilizing a freeware model.
Con Free version needs registration
The free version needs to be registered with a valid email adress.
Con Installs a lot of crap and does not clean up
On Linux it installs over 40 MB of templates, images and other crap people will never need.
De-install does not clean up usr/share/freeoffice.
Con Breaks icon themes
On Linux it breaks all icon themes by modifying them.
Con No VBA support
As Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is proprietary software used in MS Office.
Con It's not Microsoft Office and it never will be
Use SoftMaker Office only if you want basic MS Office-like features. Once you delve deeper into the software the omissions become glaringly obvious.
Con Keyboard shortcuts cannot be rebound
Con Scrolling is not smooth
Con Adding annotations isn't as intuitive as it should be
Instructions can be found here. Specifically, a user should be able to select a word or block of text, then right-click and see highlight/add note options in the drop-down menu. Currently, this option isn't available (as of Evince v3.18.2 / 13th June 2018).
Con Poor UI
Since version 3 it is almost unusable.
Con Can't delete pages
No Hand Tool. Automatic Zoom broken.
You have to boot in to windows to have a decent PDF reader.
Con Bugs that never get fixed
Irritating bugs that never get fixed (such as starting scrolling randomly when moving mouse around) and devs that don't care.
Con Tied to GNOME
Comes with all those weird things like popovers and clientside windows.
Con Slow to open PDFs
Con CSD - Why do you need to search for stuff you know is there... somewhere.
MS thought it was smart to remove "Start" buttons. With CSD, devs thought it would be good for productivity to play hide and seek with standard functions. And Evince regrettably is also riding that wave. It is that Evince has a superior (whole document) search result presentation and that its function is pretty simple and straight forward (read, search), that it makes me tolerate the silly "hamburger" (CSD) foolishness. If Atril (no CSD) would have similar search result output, a switch over would be just one heartbeat away...
Con Window can't be resized
You can only read in a small box or fullscreen, no way to manually size window.
Con Thumbs not working
Scroll once, and all thumbs in the side panel are gone.
Con Unicode problems
Some languages other than English do not render correctly.
