Fast PDF File Viewing

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:17:51 +0800 (WST)
Bret Busby <bret@busby.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, Amit Uttamchandani wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > I tried searching the mailing list archives as well as google for
> > this but did not find any concrete answer.
> >
> > Here at work they have allowed me to use Linux . Anyways,
> > I am using debian exclusively and try to use Free Software
> > applications wherever I can. Based on my research the fastest PDF
> > viewer out there is xpdf. Right now it is performing fast, but when
> > viewing large PDF files (generated from AUTOCAD drawings),
> > panning/scrolling through the document takes a long time.
> >
> > In comparison to a colleague's acrobat reader on windows, his
> > acrobat reader performs a lot faster.
> >
> >
>
> Do you have Acrobat Reader 8.0 installed on your Linux computer?
>

Sorry for the lack of details...I will try to install adobe reader for
linux. I am using debian etch (stable) by the way with xpdf 3.01. So
far I do not have any problems with xpdf except for viewing large
drawings which is why I did not even think about installing acrobat for
linux.

Regarding my colleagues acrobat reader, i believe is running acrobat
reader 7.0 on his xp machine..


> If so, how does the speed compare?
>
> You have not made any reference to what version of Linux you are
> using; whether it is Debian stable or Debian experimental, and
> whether you have the latest available stable version of Acrobat
> Reader installed (version number that you have installed?), and how
> the speed of whatever version of Acrobat Reader you have installed,
> compares with your envied colleague's Acrobat Reader.
>


Thanks,
Amit


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Amit Uttamchandani wrote:

>
> I tried searching the mailing list archives as well as google for this
> but did not find any concrete answer.
>
> Here at work they have allowed me to use Linux . Anyways,
> I am using debian exclusively and try to use Free Software applications
> wherever I can. Based on my research the fastest PDF viewer out there
> is xpdf. Right now it is performing fast, but when viewing large PDF
> files (generated from AUTOCAD drawings), panning/scrolling through the
> document takes a long time.
>

Sounds like a caching problem to me. Did you try kpdf? I think it caches
the "read-ahead" pages before you start reading them. So if you are
scrolling sequentially, it might help. If you are viewing pages in no
particular order, then I do not think it will help much.

I also do not know the performace difference between xpdf, kpdf. I have only
used kpdf and it always seemed fast even with large files. But most of the
files, I interacted with, are not graphics heavy as is the case for you.

> In comparison to a colleague's acrobat reader on windows, his acrobat
> reader performs a lot faster.

I even found that acrobat reader on Linux (Debian etch) is slower than
acrobat reader on M$. YMMV.

>
> After doing some research, I decided to try to compile the latest the
> XPDF from source (3.02, the one I have is from etch repos @ ver 3.01).
> Based on the new features/bug fixed list, there are a lot of changes
> that help fix the performance issue described above. However, I can
> never get it compiled in etch, the freetype libraries can never be
> found.

Did you look in backports to see if there is a backport already available?

hth
raju
--
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/kk288/
http://malayamaarutham.blogspot.com/


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