[dot] LWN.net: The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1102870587/

From: Waldo Bastian <bastian at kde.org>
Dept: views-on-viewing-with-viewers
Date: Sunday 12/Dec/2004, @17:56

LWN.net: The Grumpy Editor's Guide to PDF Viewers
=================================================

   As part of its Grumpy Editor series
[http://lwn.net/Articles/grumpy-editor/], LWN.net [http://lwn.net/]
looks at PDF viewers [http://lwn.net/Articles/113094/] including the KDE
applications KGhostview and KPDF. The author was impressed by KGhostview
and sees a bright future for KPDF.

     "In general, the interface provided by KGhostview is as nice as any
PDF viewer your editor has been able to find. It is clearly a tool which
has received some serious thought - and use - by its developers."

     About KPDF the author says the following: "It does appear that
further work is being done with kpdf, at least if one goes by some
[http://static.kdenews.org/fab/screenies/kpdf/kpdf_singlepage_contents.png]
screenshots
[http://static.kdenews.org/fab/screenies/kpdf/kpdf_continous_search.png]
linked
[http://static.kdenews.org/fab/screenies/kpdf/kpdf_2p_continous_popup.png]
to
[http://static.kdenews.org/fab/screenies/kpdf/kpdf_2pages_fitPage.png]
by KDE.News [http://dot.kde.org/]. The images suggest that the current
development version supports multiple-page displays, string searches,
and more. A future kpdf could well be best PDF viewer of them all; the
current version is too unfinished to be usable, however."

     KDE.News contacted KPDF developers Albert Astals Cid
[tsdgeos at terra.es] and Enrico Ros [eros.kde at email.it] for some comments
on the future plans. Enrico Ros has been working for the last few months
on new features in the kpdf_experiments CVS branch. Albert Astals Cid
says: "For KDE 3.4 I hope to convince Enrico to stop doing wonderful
features and begin merging the kpdf_experiments branch. That includes
continuous page mode, 2 page side by side mode, search,  PDF file
properties dialog, table of contents, copy text from the document,  copy
images from the document to file or clipboard, some accessibility things
 like invert colors, change paper color, draw lines around images, etc.
I  think bookmarks and annotations will probably have to wait till after
KDE 3.4."

     Enrico Ros adds: "I hope to do the merge between now and next
weekend. A couple of things more: speech synthesis on text selection
with kttsd  which is automatically detected at runtime if it is
installed. Lots of speed and happiness for the end user. We have an
underlying engine for  doing very cool gfx effects too... and in a fast
way. I don't know if  we will be able to take full advantage of its
features for KDE 3.4 though."

     A complete overview of KPDF's current status and future plans can
be found in its  TODO file
[http://webcvs.kde.org/kdegraphics/kpdf/kpdf/TODO?rev=1.3.2.51&only_with_tag=kpdf_experiments&view=markup].
"For the future we plan to add a complete set of annotation tools. Some
colored highlighters, some sticky papers, a couple of pencils and a
rubber. Support more file formats. I think the hard part for this is
done. I think that PS will come first, then maybe DVI, txt... It depends
on the code-base we'll get attracted. We also want to offer online (and
offline maybe) translation for the document/page/selection and make some
 accessibility improvements." Enrico concludes.
 If you have suggestions for useful or cool features that you would like
to see in the  next release or just want to thank the developers for
their work you can contact the KPDF developers directly by e-mail.