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Add to SafariWhen comparing MuPDF vs (Spac)emacs with pdf-tools, the Slant community recommends MuPDF for most people. In the question“What are the best PDF viewers for UNIX-like systems?” MuPDF is ranked 9th while (Spac)emacs with pdf-tools is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose MuPDF is:
It was written in C and opengl, so your hardware was used fully.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Super fast
It was written in C and opengl, so your hardware was used fully.
Pro Vim-mode shortcut keys
Super easy to use with rapid response.
Pro Excellent for presentations
Pro Annotation capability
With mupdf-gl, you can do most of the annotations and comments.
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 print option
Con No two page mode
Con Not enough functionality
If you want "minimal," you got it.
Con The annotation does not have good shortcut key support
Con Cannot customize shortcut keys
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.
Con No continuous scroll
Con Requires emacs
