Sumatra PDF

infobox software



caption = Sumatra PDF 0.6 running on Windows XP
author = Krzysztof Kowalczyk
developer = Krzysztof Kowalczyk
released = 1 June 2006
latest release version = 0.9.3
latest release date = release date and age|2008|10|7
programming language = C++
operating system = Microsoft Windows
language = Multilingual
genre = PDF reader
license = GNU General Public License
website = [http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/ Project home page]

Sumatra PDF, also known simply as Sumatra, is a free, open source, light-weight PDF reader for Microsoft Windows, written by Krzysztof Kowalczyk.cite web |url=http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/ |title=Sumatra PDF - A PDF Viewer for Windows |accessdate=2008-02-19 |author=Krzysztof Kowalczyk ]

Features

Sumatra has a minimalistic design, with its simplicity attained at the expense of extensive features. It uses the MuPDF PDF rendering library.

Sumatra was designed for portable use, as it consists of one single file with no external dependencies, making it usable from an external USB drive. [cite web |url=http://www.appscout.com/2007/08/sumatra_pdf_viewer_fast_and_si.php |title=Sumatra PDF Viewer: Fast and Simple PDF Reading |author=Alan Henry |date=2007-08-11 |publisher=AppScout ] This classifies it as a portable application. As is characteristic of many portable applications, Sumatra takes up little disk space. It has a 1.1 MB setup file, compared to Adobe Reader's 33.5 MB, for Windows XP and Vista. [cite web |url=http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2_allversions.html |title=Adobe Reader |accessdate=2008-07-17 |author=Adobe Systems Incorporated |authorlink=Adobe Systems |year=2008 ] Installed size is also 1.1MB, whereas Adobe Reader 9.0.0's installed size is approximately 198 MB.

Sumatra does not lock the PDF file. Without closing the PDF file a user can recompile the text document and generate a new PDF file and then press the R key to refresh the PDF document.

Printing is achieved in Sumatra by transforming each pdf page into a bitmap image. This results in very large spool files and potentially slow printing on printers with little memory. [http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/poppler/2008-May/003783.html] Sumatra 0.5 and earlier versions can print PDFs that have disallowed printing. This feature has been removed from the newer versions.

Since Sumatra 0.9.1 hyperlinks embedded in PDF documents are also supported. cite web|url = http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/news.html|title = Sumatra PDF - A PDF Viewer for Windows - Version history|accessdate = 2008-07-14|last = Kowalczyk|first = Krzysztof|authorlink = |year = 2008|month = May]

Sumatra is multilingual, with 20 community-contributed translations. [cite web |url=http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/translators.html |title=Translators |accessdate=2007-10-29 |author=Krzysztof Kowalczyk |publisher=Sumatra PDF - A PDF Viewer for Windows ]

Sumatra supports SyncTeX, a bidirectional method for synchronizing TeX source and PDF output produced by pdfTeX or XeTeX.

Development

The first version of Sumatra was designated 0.1 and was released on 1 June 2006.

As it was initially designed when Windows XP was the current version of Windows, Sumatra has some incompatibility issues with earlier versions of Windows, including Windows 95, 98, Me and 2000. [cite web |url=http://blog.kowalczyk.info/forum_sumatra/topic.php?TopicId=484 |title=Missing Menubar |accessdate=2007-10-27 |author=Tobias F. |coauthors=Krzysztof Kowalczyk |date=2007-09-24 |publisher=Sumatra PDF Viewer forum ]

While there is no source code package by the author, the source code can be downloaded via its Subversion development repository. [cite web |url=http://blog.kowalczyk.info/forum_sumatra/topic.php?TopicId=347 |title=Source Code |accessdate=2008-02-13 |author=Mohammad shafie |coauthors=Krzysztof Kowalczyk, TJS |date=2007-07-03 |publisher=Sumatra PDF Viewer forum ] [cite web |url=http://blog.kowalczyk.info/forum_sumatra/topic.php?TopicId=594 |title=I can't dowload the source |accessdate=2008-02-13 |author=Paul |coauthors=Krzysztof Kowalczyk |date=2007-12-18 |publisher=Sumatra PDF Viewer forum ]

Name and artwork

The author has indicated that the choice of the name "Sumatra" is not a tribute to the Sumatra island or coffee, stating that there is no particular reasoning behind the name. [cite web |url=http://blog.kowalczyk.info/forum_sumatra/topic.php?TopicId=741 |title=Name of Application |accessdate=2008-02-21 |author=Adam Hunt |coauthors=Krzysztof Kowalczyk |date=2008-02-21 |publisher=Sumatra PDF Viewer forum ]

The graphics design of Sumatra is a tribute to the cover of the Watchmen graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. cite web|url = http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-windows-download/open-pdfs-in-a-flash-with-sumatra-287281.php|title = Open PDF's in a flash with Sumatra|accessdate = 2008-06-22|last = Lifehacker|authorlink = |year = 2007|month = September]

Critical reception

Sumatra has attracted acclaim for its speed and simplicity, [cite web |url=http://www.osalt.com/sumatra-pdf |title=Sumatra PDF 0.8 |accessdate=2008-02-21 |author=Anders Ingeman Rasmussen |year=2008 |publisher=Open Source Alternatives | quote = Sumatra PDF is a fairly young project aiming to create a small, simple and fast PDF viewer. It main features are showing PDFs and starting up really fast - and it does both just perfectly. ] its keyboard shortcuts [cite web |url=http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-windows-download/open-pdfs-in-a-flash-with-sumatra-287281.php |title=Open PDF's in a flash with Sumatra |accessdate=2008-02-21 |author=Gina Trapani |date=2007-08-09 |publisher=Lifehacker ] and its open source development. [cite web |url=http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-windows-download/open-pdfs-in-a-flash-with-sumatra-287281.php |title=Open PDF's in a flash with Sumatra |accessdate=2008-02-21 |author=Gina Trapani |date=2007-08-09 |publisher=Lifehacker | quote=The Sumatra PDF Viewer is a tiny open source portable reader that opens PDF's in the blink of an eye. Bloat and startup time is a major drawback to Adobe Reader, so we fled to the faster arms of Foxit Reader long ago. However, at 850KB, Sumatra is way slimmer than FoxIt.]

See also

* List of PDF software
* List of portable software

References

External links

* [http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/ Sumatra PDF - Home page]
* [http://code.google.com/p/sumatrapdf/ sumatrapdf] at Google Code
* [http://www.ohloh.net/projects/4623 SumatraPDF] at Ohloh