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A standards-based PDF viewer created using Electron and Pdf.js

32 points by burtonator 9y ago

burtonator 9y ago
I think this project deserves a lot more attention. There aren't decent PDF tools for Linux and this is also based on web standards which is awesome. The combination of older/robust technology like PDF but with modern web standards is really compelling.
- krastanov 9y ago
  In my experience Evince (the PDF reader in Gnome) works much better than PDF.js (and is faster, has smaller footprint, supports more advanced PDF feature, etc).
  - fithisux 9y ago
    I totally agree.
- kencausey 9y ago
  I personally quite like MuPDF for its simplicity but mostly I'm simply viewing a document, it doesn't support forms or probably a number of other PDF features.
- seba_dos1 9y ago
  What's wrong with Okular? I like having PDF.js in my browser for quick previews and I find it way more preferable than what Chrome does with its plugin, but on the desktop I wouldn't really choose PDF.js over Okular.
- megous 9y ago
  There are decent tools for PDF. (La)TeX being one, poppler being another, qpdf being yet another that I used and found very useful for manipulating PDFs, like removal of useless watermarks. There are plenty of other tools that can work with PDFs, like inkscape, libreoffice, ImageMagick,...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tathougies 9y ago
  There aren't decent PDF tools for linux? I've always found the opposite.
eberkund 9y ago
On Windows I like Sumatra (https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html), it's only a few MBs and opens blazing fast and I have never had a problem reading any PDFs with it. There's also some nifty things you can do with its CLI.
- fithisux 9y ago
  SumatraPDF and muPDF for really big pdfs. When on the mood, I use my trusty GSView.
- lurker_primo 9y ago
  Sumatra PDF can open .cbr/.cbz files too. So, it serves as a comic reader too.
jwilk 9y ago
What do you mean by "standards-based"?
- jlarocco 9y ago
  I'm not sure what the authors mean, but although PDF was created by Adobe there is an ISO standardized version of it now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A
  - jwilk 9y ago
    PDF proper is an ISO standard, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Portable_Document_Format_(PDF)#ISO_Standardization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Portable_Docume...
butz 9y ago
Or you could just open PDF with your browser.
tathougies 9y ago
We have truly come full circle
- hedora 9y ago
  It’s too bad electron won’t run in display postscript environments.
nsuser3 9y ago
I really dont understand why I should open a new browser instance (Electron) to view one pdf when I could just open it in my browser..
- rrosen326 9y ago
  This particular solution may not be solving the problem I need, but I'd love to see a really good version of PDF.js running in electron for existing electron apps. Use case: You're building an electron app. It needs to view pdfs. Right now, you need to implement pdf.js yourself. It's non trivial. And the more full-featured you want it, the harder it is. And that's only half the issue. What if you want a cross-platform way to create a thumbnail of a pdf? Ugg, don't let me get started on ghostscript...
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > What if you want a cross-platform way to create a thumbnail of a pdf? Ugg, don't let me get started on ghostscript... Embed statically linked versions of imagick in your program or download them upon first load/setup.
    - chatmasta 9y ago
      Someone who knows how to do that probably isn’t programming in electron.
    - rrosen326 9y ago
      ImageMagick requires Ghostscript to handle pdfs. So you need both. Except on OSX, where you can use SIPS. But on Windows, you're stuck with IM/GS.
rffn 9y ago
And this does display PDFs with embedded HTML pages? Could these embedded web pages contain pdf.js again to show an embedded PDF?
- nasredin 9y ago
  You've just inceptioned yourself to OUT OF MEMORY crash!
SigmundA 9y ago
Did Pdf.js ever get their SVG backend working? Without that printing was basically broken since it just printed out each page as a bitmap from canvas at like 96 dpi which ended up being low res / fuzzy on paper.
tptacek 9y ago
People seem skeptical of this because of Electron fatigue, but keep in mind that if your browser's built-in PDF rendering is native code, there's potentially a security win to replacing that attack surface with Pdf.js. Already, we go to some trouble to train people to open attachments on Google Drive's web viewers rather than by double-clicking on them.
- koolba 9y ago
  Doesn't Firefox itself use pdf.js for PDF rendering? The FAQ says it's been baked into Firefox since v19: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Ques...
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Yes, Pdf.js is a Mozilla project, right?
- jlarocco 9y ago
  That line of reasoning seems specious. Everything that runs on a computer is run as, or by, native code at some point, and that doesn't make it automatically insecure. At the same time, since Electron uses a browser, any potentially unsafe native code in the browser is loaded and waiting to be exploited anyway when using this viewer. Finally, I think most people (myself included) trust their browser developer more than they trust a random person's Javascript thrown on GitHub. That said, I don't see why anybody would use this over mupdf or evince.
  - pvg 9y ago
    Managed runtimes being harder to exploit than native code written in an unsafe language is not a controversial idea that you're going to kill by judicious application of the axiomatic method.
- codedokode 9y ago
  But if you use PDF viewer in Chrome, it is properly sandboxed from the rest of OS. Is this app sandboxed as well? I don't think so.
znedw 9y ago
zathura is nice on *nix, has support for multiple pdf rendering engines (muPDF and poppler).
jlarocco 9y ago
Every one of the browser and/or Javascript based PDF viewers I've used has been a terrible experience, and this one doesn't seem to be any different. If I download a PDF it's because I want to open it in my regular PDF viewer (mupdf) and not in a crappy browser based one.
Rjevski 9y ago
A PDF viewer that eats up half my RAM. Just what I needed.
teaspoons 9y ago
What I want from a PDF viewer is dark mode (white on black). I know on MacOS you can do invert colours, but that inverts the images too. Also I want to be able to view portrait PDFs in landscape mode with the text in 2 columns.
- tincholio 9y ago
  Zathura supports this (and is otherwise awesome, too)

32 points by burtonator 9y ago

I think this project deserves a lot more attention. There aren't decent PDF tools for Linux and this is also based on web standards which is awesome. The combination of older/robust technology like PDF but with modern web standards is really compelling.

krastanov 9y ago
In my experience Evince (the PDF reader in Gnome) works much better than PDF.js (and is faster, has smaller footprint, supports more advanced PDF feature, etc).
- fithisux 9y ago
  I totally agree.
kencausey 9y ago
I personally quite like MuPDF for its simplicity but mostly I'm simply viewing a document, it doesn't support forms or probably a number of other PDF features.
seba_dos1 9y ago
What's wrong with Okular? I like having PDF.js in my browser for quick previews and I find it way more preferable than what Chrome does with its plugin, but on the desktop I wouldn't really choose PDF.js over Okular.
megous 9y ago
There are decent tools for PDF. (La)TeX being one, poppler being another, qpdf being yet another that I used and found very useful for manipulating PDFs, like removal of useless watermarks. There are plenty of other tools that can work with PDFs, like inkscape, libreoffice, ImageMagick,...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tathougies 9y ago
There aren't decent PDF tools for linux? I've always found the opposite.

eberkund 9y ago

On Windows I like Sumatra (https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html), it's only a few MBs and opens blazing fast and I have never had a problem reading any PDFs with it. There's also some nifty things you can do with its CLI.

fithisux 9y ago
SumatraPDF and muPDF for really big pdfs. When on the mood, I use my trusty GSView.
lurker_primo 9y ago
Sumatra PDF can open .cbr/.cbz files too. So, it serves as a comic reader too.

jwilk 9y ago

What do you mean by "standards-based"?

jlarocco 9y ago
I'm not sure what the authors mean, but although PDF was created by Adobe there is an ISO standardized version of it now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A
- jwilk 9y ago
  PDF proper is an ISO standard, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Portable_Document_Format_(PDF)#ISO_Standardization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Portable_Docume...

butz 9y ago

Or you could just open PDF with your browser.

tathougies 9y ago

We have truly come full circle

hedora 9y ago
It’s too bad electron won’t run in display postscript environments.

nsuser3 9y ago

I really dont understand why I should open a new browser instance (Electron) to view one pdf when I could just open it in my browser..

rrosen326 9y ago
This particular solution may not be solving the problem I need, but I'd love to see a really good version of PDF.js running in electron for existing electron apps. Use case: You're building an electron app. It needs to view pdfs. Right now, you need to implement pdf.js yourself. It's non trivial. And the more full-featured you want it, the harder it is. And that's only half the issue. What if you want a cross-platform way to create a thumbnail of a pdf? Ugg, don't let me get started on ghostscript...
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > What if you want a cross-platform way to create a thumbnail of a pdf? Ugg, don't let me get started on ghostscript... Embed statically linked versions of imagick in your program or download them upon first load/setup.
  - chatmasta 9y ago
    Someone who knows how to do that probably isn’t programming in electron.
  - rrosen326 9y ago
    ImageMagick requires Ghostscript to handle pdfs. So you need both. Except on OSX, where you can use SIPS. But on Windows, you're stuck with IM/GS.

rffn 9y ago

And this does display PDFs with embedded HTML pages? Could these embedded web pages contain pdf.js again to show an embedded PDF?

nasredin 9y ago
You've just inceptioned yourself to OUT OF MEMORY crash!

SigmundA 9y ago

Did Pdf.js ever get their SVG backend working? Without that printing was basically broken since it just printed out each page as a bitmap from canvas at like 96 dpi which ended up being low res / fuzzy on paper.

tptacek 9y ago

People seem skeptical of this because of Electron fatigue, but keep in mind that if your browser's built-in PDF rendering is native code, there's potentially a security win to replacing that attack surface with Pdf.js. Already, we go to some trouble to train people to open attachments on Google Drive's web viewers rather than by double-clicking on them.

koolba 9y ago
Doesn't Firefox itself use pdf.js for PDF rendering? The FAQ says it's been baked into Firefox since v19: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Ques...
- tptacek 9y ago
  Yes, Pdf.js is a Mozilla project, right?
jlarocco 9y ago
That line of reasoning seems specious. Everything that runs on a computer is run as, or by, native code at some point, and that doesn't make it automatically insecure. At the same time, since Electron uses a browser, any potentially unsafe native code in the browser is loaded and waiting to be exploited anyway when using this viewer. Finally, I think most people (myself included) trust their browser developer more than they trust a random person's Javascript thrown on GitHub. That said, I don't see why anybody would use this over mupdf or evince.
- pvg 9y ago
  Managed runtimes being harder to exploit than native code written in an unsafe language is not a controversial idea that you're going to kill by judicious application of the axiomatic method.
codedokode 9y ago
But if you use PDF viewer in Chrome, it is properly sandboxed from the rest of OS. Is this app sandboxed as well? I don't think so.

znedw 9y ago

zathura is nice on *nix, has support for multiple pdf rendering engines (muPDF and poppler).

jlarocco 9y ago

Every one of the browser and/or Javascript based PDF viewers I've used has been a terrible experience, and this one doesn't seem to be any different. If I download a PDF it's because I want to open it in my regular PDF viewer (mupdf) and not in a crappy browser based one.

Rjevski 9y ago

A PDF viewer that eats up half my RAM. Just what I needed.

teaspoons 9y ago

What I want from a PDF viewer is dark mode (white on black). I know on MacOS you can do invert colours, but that inverts the images too. Also I want to be able to view portrait PDFs in landscape mode with the text in 2 columns.

tincholio 9y ago
Zathura supports this (and is otherwise awesome, too)