SumatraPDF 3.4 Released

https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/docs/Version-history

by rlv-dan • 4 years ago

277 75 4 years ago

2Gkashmiri3• 4 years ago

this is simply the best thing to happen to a windows pc. seriously, adobe reader is ABSOLUTE trash as compared to sumatra. every time i see someone's pc, i involuntarily install sumatra, remove adobe reader

enriquto• 4 years ago

What does it add to plain mupdf (on which it seems to be based)? I love the clean, elegant interface of mupdf, and I can't imagine how could you ever improve on that.

kjksf5• 4 years ago

Lots and lots of additional features.

More formats supported, more view options, remembers the history of files, command palette to quickly access all functionality, way more keyboard shortucts, customizable keyboard shortucts, more customizability of the UI.

Maybe I shouldn't comment on the competition but mupdf on windows is very bare bones.

GoblinSlayer• 4 years ago

As I understand, with html, mupdf tries to support all web technologies?

dartharva• 4 years ago

The pre-CC Adobe Reader XI functions pretty much the same as Sumatra and doesn't have those anti-features

2Gkashmiri3• 4 years ago

sumatra is like 2 MB install

YPPH• 4 years ago

Adobe Reader XI reached end-of-life of on 15 October 2017. [0] It has not received security updates for nearly five years.

Security updates are very important for a PDF reader, particularly Adobe's. [1] I would advise you not to use it, unless it is to open trusted PDF files you created yourself.

[0] https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/end-of-support-acrobat-xi...

[1] https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-53/p...

instagraham• 4 years ago

At what point will Adobe designers realise that most of us would rather experience knife wounds than use Adobe Reader? It is an objectively worse experience to almost every single PDF reader including Chrome. I'd rather get stabbed every time I use SumatraPDF than use Adobe Reader.

bambax• 4 years ago

I agree with you on Adobe Reader but I think Adobe doesn't care one bit. Somehow they have managed to entrench themselves in the enterprise document workflow.

encryptluks22• 4 years ago

So you remove a full-featured product, albeit a bloated one, for one that has very limited functionality. So next time they go to sign a PDF or whatever they are going to say... hmmm, this person uninstalled something I actually use.

2Gkashmiri3• 4 years ago

eh, people dont have to "Sign" a pdf, there are dozens of online software to do just that.

marcodiego• 4 years ago

For everyone who needs: JSignPDF[1]. FLOSS multi platform software to sign PDF's.

[1] http://jsignpdf.sourceforge.net/

runarberg• 4 years ago

It’s been over a decade since I used adobe reader (currently a Linux user, and sumatra user when I had windows). And I honestly don’t remember what made adobe reader bad (I just remember that it was bad). Do you care to explain what it is specifically about adobe reader that is so bad compared to Sumatra?

rahimnathwani• 4 years ago

Don't be fooled by the name. It's not limited to PDF. It's possibly the best ebook reader for windows.

RachelF2• 4 years ago

It's good and fast but lacks some features (like find) that Calibre's reader has.

kjksf5• 4 years ago

3.4 has a new epub / mobi support and has find

Cristan• 4 years ago

3.4 (2022-05-24)
better support for epub files using mupdf's epub engine. Adds text selection and search in ebook files. Better rendering fidelity. On the downside, might be slower.

Finally. SumatraPDF was my main driver for epub files even before this, but it's so good to finally get search.

qwerty456127• 4 years ago

Also almost the only app I could find to just open ebook files the traditional document file way - without adding them to a library (I hate the fact every ebook file viewer insists to maintain a library). Calibre's viewer executable is an alternative - it can open files without adding them to the Calibre library.

kjksf5• 4 years ago

I'm especially proud of adding Command Palette (Ctrl + K).

And you can now customize keyboard shortcuts.

And created https://sumatrapdf.canny.io/feature-requests so that you can vote on features I should implement next (people really want the dark theme).

And I'm making https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/prerelease daily builds with seamless auto-updates so that people interested in latest features can get them as soon as they are implemented (I've already added .avif support, and commands to re-open last closed file and clear history)

Dracophoenix• 4 years ago

Thank you very much for adding font recognition in a second properties window. I've been able to rid myself of Acrobat for months now. My only critique would be that the font list would be better kept in the first properties window. One Ctrl+D is more elegant than two.

Would a Dark Mode come in the next release?

kjksf5• 4 years ago

Possibly. It's the most requested feature at https://sumatrapdf.canny.io/feature-requests

thefz• 4 years ago

Thank you for such an amazing product, I have been using Sumatra everywhere I can for years. In an era of bloated software you showed there is another way.

tomcam• 4 years ago

Incredible piece of work. Thank you for dealing with the PDF spec(?) so I don’t have to.

mkl2• 4 years ago

That is mostly done by the MuPDF library, which SumatraPDF provides a nice interface for (along with supporting many other formats).

I think the difficulty of PDFs is not so much the spec, but the many many non-spec-compliant PDF files out there that need workarounds.

thecleaner• 4 years ago

This used to be my go-to reader when I used to use windows. Really snappy, always did the job. Congratulations on the release.

lexa1979• 4 years ago

I'll add to the list of thank yous, I've been a SumatraPDF user for years and never looked back. It's everything I love in a program: light, fast, does one job perfectly. Kudos from Belgium ! :)

wiz21c• 4 years ago

Funny, I use SumatraPDF in Belgium too :-) Thanks !

Zababa• 4 years ago

Thank you for your work on SumatraPDF, it's the best PDF and epub viewer I've ever used.

pbnjeh• 4 years ago

I don't know whether this would be you or mupdf -- I suspect the latter -- but I'd really like to be able change the line spacing (i.e. the "leading") in the epub reading mode.

I find line spacing to be one of the larger factors contributing to readability (or lack thereof).

Regardless, thanks, and cheers!

albert_e• 4 years ago

is there an option to display two pages side-by-side for a PDF that I am missing?

I presume this is very common use-case for ebooks?

whyoh• 4 years ago

View -> Facing

mkl2• 4 years ago

Ctrl-7 or Ctrl-8, depending on whether you want page 1 by itself or beside page 2.

cassepipe• 4 years ago

I have now been on Linux for quite some time but I remember how happy I was when I found as a teenager your fast no bs pdf reader for my not at all powerful old windows machine. The sheer joy of kicking Adobe Acrobat reader out of the system tray...

HKH2• 4 years ago

I don't use Windows, but when I have to, SumatraPDF is one of the first things I install. Thanks.

colejohnson66• 4 years ago

The 64 bit installer of the prerelease (SumatraPDF-prerel-64-install.exe) seems to be 404ing. The other three downloads work, though.

https://files.sumatrapdfreader.org/file/kjk-files/software/s...

  {
    "code": "not_found",
    "message": "File with such name does not exist.",
    "status": 404
  }

kjksf5• 4 years ago

Thanks, I'm proxying downloads via cloudflare (otherwise I would pay $500/mo bandwidth bill) and sometimes it breaks.

I've cleared the cache and it seems to be working (at least for me).

Night_Thastus• 4 years ago

I've been dying for a proper dark theme. I think there's been a workaround/hack to do something like it, but it doesn't look good that way.

sirpunch• 4 years ago

Last time I tried Sumatrapdf I couldn't find a good way to quickly turn dark mode on/off, or keep a sidebar that showed me all of my annotations inline, or make 'popup note' annotations. Has any of it changed now?

zamadatix2• 4 years ago

For a real dark mode it still isn't there but it's in the developer's roadmap and the most voted feature at the new https://sumatrapdf.canny.io/feature-requests

mariusmg• 4 years ago

I had to revert back to 3.3, the EbookUI settings were removed in 3.4 and you cannot use custom fonts when reading EPUB files. It's unusable for me like this.

UmbertoNoEco3• 4 years ago

Why in god's name would they do that? I miss the reader, too bad is not available in Linux

incognitanon• 4 years ago

You can actually run Sumatra in Linux with Wine. It's just that you have to alter a path in the PDF association config to suppress one annoying error.

drumhead• 4 years ago

Along with VLC and Firefox one of the first programs I install on a fresh windows installation. I've been using this instead of Adobe for years. And as has been mentioned it reads a lot of other formats. Its fast and clean and easily the best reader software out there.

ale42• 4 years ago

This is an incredible program to read PDFs! Lighting fast, super small, no telemetry or any other invasive things...

philonoist• 4 years ago

If you want support, publicity, bug reports, etc. just change the name to SumatraEPUB or SumatraEbook + "which can read most formats including pdfs" + Android app. It will skyrocket the downloads.

xupybd• 4 years ago

We've been using Sumatra at my work in New Zealand for the past year.

I moved back to Windows after years of Linux use. I was shocked at how slow PDFS opened. So, I started looking for a replacement. Sumatra was by far the best.

ChrisRR• 4 years ago

I used to use Sumatra all the time. It's fast and light, exactly what I'm looking for

Unfortunately BSI added DRM to the PDFs which means I'm now locked down to Acrobat

schipplock• 4 years ago

My #1 choice for .epub :).

HeckFeck• 4 years ago

Excellent lightweight and pure Win32 software, always finds its way into the system whenever I need to visit MS-land. Never change, and please never do a "modern" electron.js hell rewrite, Sumatra PDF is an exemplar of something that does its job and asks only for what it needs.

This reader along with 7Zip, IrfanViewer, FreeCommander, Gvim (and some others) comprise the old faithfuls.

asxd• 4 years ago

Along with Sumatra, agreed that IrfanView is an incredible gem. It will take pretty much anything you throw at it, and is incredibly lightweight. When doing animations, I can load up a folder with several thousand images and just hold down the right arrow key to get a preview of the animation via IrfanView.

ghusbands2• 4 years ago

Still no released support for screen readers [1]. The developer seems confused about whether muPDF should have the support [2] (accessibility is the responsibility of the GUI - it needs to provide an accessibility tree for any manually rendered text).

[1] https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/docs/Accessibility-and-Text... [2] https://github.com/sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf/issues/321

zamadatix2• 4 years ago

"SumatraPeter" is just a user with "Sumatra" in the name not the developer. The actual developer's comment is:

For standard windows controls (like buttons or menus) Windows provides the necessary code to support accessibility features used by screen readers etc. Everything else (like PDF text rendered on screen) needs custom code. This code is not easy to write and there is a lot of other code that needs to be written.

Based on your first link it seems they started working on support as described and could use some help finishing it.

ghusbands2• 4 years ago

Oops. Thank you. I wish I could edit/delete my comment. I apologise to the developer for my accidental misrepresentation.

spv• 4 years ago

SumatraPDF is great! It’s fast, but does not work well for annotations like highlighting text.

I have switched to Okular, you can install it directly from the Microsoft store directly.

metadaemon• 4 years ago

Any recommendations for macOS?

capableweb• 4 years ago

As a cross-platform solution for simple PDF files, I just use Firefox. But SumatraPDF reads much more than just PDF files, and for everything else, I haven't found a good, cross-platform alternative for the platforms I usually use (Linux, Windows and macOS).

janandonly• 4 years ago

https://www.fourth-wall.co.uk/post/10-tips-for-preview-the-d...

diimdeep• 4 years ago

mac

It works in macOS trough Wine. Try `brew install wine` `wine64 ~/.wine/drive_c/SumatraPDF-3.4.3-64.exe`

Synaesthesia• 4 years ago

Preview works pretty well.

rommel917• 4 years ago

Best PDF reader. For me biggest feature is not locking file while reading. I can't image developing some PDF with Jasper with any other PDF reader. 10 years ago people looked at me as some god when I show them how to test jasper rendering PDF with JUnit and SumatraPDF and not deployng whole app to Websphere and clicking through it. Decresed time to see changes from 4-5 minutes to 2-3 seconds.

imbnwa• 4 years ago

This app's still going?!? Man, this was my official PDF/eBook/CBZ reader when my life revolved around cheap PC laptops, Win2K/Classic theme, and lots of low-footprint apps like Foobar2000, uTorrent (pre-monetization), etc

newlikeice• 4 years ago

I found this thing like 6years ago on hn. Thanks! hands down best lightweight pdf editor ever!

stereoradonc• 4 years ago

Kudos from India :-) Keep up the good work, team! You mean a lot to us!

wrp2• 4 years ago

For Windows XP 32-bit, the last supported version is 3.1.2. There is a guy[1] who hacks on later releases to make them work on XP. His latest is version 3.3.3.[2]

[1] https://msfn.org/board/topic/176299-latest-version-of-softwa...

[2] http://designingonajuicycup.com/downloads/untested/sumatrapd... (file)

wrp2• 4 years ago

He posted in the Sumatra PDF forum how to do the hack yourself.

https://forum.sumatrapdfreader.org/t/hacking-sumatra-pdf-3-2...

knighthack• 4 years ago

As a lawyer, SumatraPDF is my go to for everything. Fast, snappy, and works with zero-config problems through Wine on Linux.

SumatraPDF 3.4 Released

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