Cool software review: Evince

Evince is a PostScript and PDF viewer for GNOME. Unlike gpdf, it renders plain PostScript nicely. Unlike ggv, it renders PDF properly. Like xpdf and gv, it is quite fast. By default, a sidebar shows page thumbnails -- if and only if the document has multiple pages -- and window-width = page-width is the default zoom. The file menu has options for "Save a copy" and Print, which means it's suitable for use as the default action on PDFs and PostScript docs.

That's all. That's all it needs to be. None of the annoyances of gpdf or xpdf or ggv. Excellent work.

I grabbed the 1236 page PDF Reference, Fifth Edition, Version 1.6 (http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/index_reference.html). In three seconds it had been opened and the first page displayed. Two seconds later I displayed the last page. Within 20 seconds every page had been thumbnailed. For reference: Celeron 1.7GHz, 768MB RAM, software mirrored 80GB WD drives, Debian Testing.

Evince is available in Debian Testing and Unstable. The home page is http://www.gnome.org/projects/evince/

Cool software review: Evince

Evince is a PostScript and PDF viewer for GNOME. Unlike gpdf, it renders plain PostScript nicely. Unlike ggv, it renders PDF properly. Like xpdf and gv, it is quite fast. By default, a sidebar shows page thumbnails -- if and only if the document has multiple pages -- and window-width = page-width is the default zoom. The file menu has options for "Save a copy" and Print, which means it's suitable for use as the default action on PDFs and PostScript docs.

That's all. That's all it needs to be. None of the annoyances of gpdf or xpdf or ggv. Excellent work.

I grabbed the 1236 page PDF Reference, Fifth Edition, Version 1.6 (http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/index_reference.html). In three seconds it had been opened and the first page displayed. Two seconds later I displayed the last page. Within 20 seconds every page had been thumbnailed. For reference: Celeron 1.7GHz, 768MB RAM, software mirrored 80GB WD drives, Debian Testing.

Evince is available in Debian Testing and Unstable. The home page is http://www.gnome.org/projects/evince/