4 ms·
(I wrote SumatraPDF). I agree that Adobe has more features than SumatraPDF. Not necessarily the PDF spec itself - SumatraPDF displays pretty much any PDF you
by kjksf 3y ago
(I wrote SumatraPDF).
I agree that Adobe has more features than SumatraPDF.
Not necessarily the PDF spec itself - SumatraPDF displays pretty much any PDF you throw at it, just way more options and stuff.
And it's not exactly slow. I'm sure the core rendering of PDF pages is same or faster.
It's just slow to start. Like very, very, sluggish slow. And it's very visible to users.
I don't think it's the features that cause the slow startup. They just don't seem to care about optimizing it.
Chrome has more features that Adobe Reader. It has video calling, a capable PDF viewer and all the other stuff in ever growing web standards.
And yet it starts up fast. Not instant as SumatraPDF but way, way faster than Adobe Reader.
I think that it's more than fair benchmark regarding complexity of the app.
The difference is that Chrome team cares about performance, including startup speed, and they spend a lot of resources on it.
I remember Chrome was counting and removing C++ static initializers from their code (the code that runs before main()) because that contributes to startup speed.
That's the level of care you need to have and I think Adobe just doesn't have it.
- dharmab 3y ago> SumatraPDF displays pretty much any PDF you throw at it, just way more options and stuff Sumatra includes a 3D renderer to display embedded CAD models? https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/displaying-3d-models-pdfs.html https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/displaying-3d-models-p...
- legends2k 3y agoI understood "pretty much" as "most" but not "all". I've been viewing PDFs for 20+ years and never encountered one with 3D content so ”pretty much” seems like a good adjective to use here for me.
- _wf2l 3y agowhat did you think this gotcha was? you just look annoying and pretentious. he didn't say literally every PDF for a reason
- baz00 3y agoI actually have to pay for Adobe because I need the features (signing, annotation, redaction, OCR etc). Does SumatraPDF cover those at all? As for startup speed, it's not really an issue as Adobe just lurks there all day in the taskbar for me at least ready to roll.
- kjksf 3y agoIn latest version you can annotate (highlight, underline etc.) and create a few other annotation types and move them. More / better annotation editing, signing, redaction is something I want to do. OCR - I don't have a good handle on how important that is.
- baz00 3y agoThanks will look into it. Reply appreciated.
- solarman5000 3y agoI have to pay for about 30 adobe acrobat licenses a year I would much rather throw this money your way, but I need those features
- wolverine876 3y ago> SumatraPDF displays pretty much any PDF you throw at it I often use PDF applications for documents that I want to keep for decades, including annotations I make. How much can I count on SumatraPDF, or any PDF application, outputting future compatible documents from conversions, annotations, deleting/merging/etc, content editing, etc.? Is there a difference between applications? My instinct is to play it safe and use Adobe, figuring whatever they do is the de facto standard. But I strongly dislike the applications and all the privacy invasions they impose. (Yes, I'm aware of PDF/A; I'm talking about applications' outputs and not the standards.)
- ivraatiems 3y agoThank you for responding and congratulations on the success of SumatraPDF, it seems well-deserved. I will say that on older systems, Reader/Acrobat are not just slow at startup. I am writing this from a machine that has an i7-2600 and 16GB of DDR3 RAM. Reader is almost unusably slow. It's absurd. Now where's that Mac port? /s