When comparing Kindle for PC vs Zathura, the Slant community recommends Zathura for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop readers?” Zathura is ranked 2nd while Kindle for PC is ranked 11th. 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 Built in store
The Kindle app for Android features an in built eBook store within the app that sells eBooks, magazines, newspapers, comic books and graphic novels. Amazon also offers one of it not the biggest eBook store available today.
Pro Send to Kindle
The Kindle platform allows users to upload their own eBooks and documents to be read on any of the Kindle apps or devices.
Pro App supports a multitude of operating systems
Kindle for PC is one of the many apps available from Amazon for the Kindle platform. This allows users to keep their library with them no matter what device they are using.
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.
Cons
Con Send to Kindle now has to be paid for
Send to Kindle only works if a user is already paying for a cloud subscription plan.
Con Not good for students research
The eBooks available from Amazon do not offer normal page numbers, printing or even copy paste, which makes using any of the ebooks for reports or papers pretty much impossible.
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.