
My New Favorite Tool for Reviewing PDFs: Okular - jrepinc
https://harriskenny.com/2019/03/23/my-new-favorite-tool-for-reviewing-pdfs/
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tonydiep
I just evaluated Evince, Okular, Foxit, and Acrobat for annotating PDFs.

My particular use case is to annotate emails, spreadsheet, etc., and merge
them as exhibits into a legal brief.

After annotation, the other programs can export the original or it export the
annotation layers but it could not give you a PDF with both the original and
the annotations merged into one layer. This was a deal breaker.

With Okular you can print the PDF with the annotations as a new PDF to make
sure your annotations are always visible. With the other programs the
annotations are on separate layers which can get hidden on purpose or by
mistake.

I found no other free program that could flatten the layers.

Okular deserves to be better known.

~~~
crazygringo
In theory, shouldn't every PDF viewer support printing... and both macOS and
Windows 10 support printing to PDF... which flattens the layers?

Just tried it with macOS Preview and totally flattens it, the annotations pane
lists nothing, I can't select/move annotations... they're permanent.

However, also just tried with Acrobat Reader on macOS, and infuriatingly after
selecting the system's "Print to PDF" Acrobat pops up an error saying it
doesn't support print to PDF. _WTF_. Why would they intentionally go _out of
their way_ to _disable_ that?

~~~
mwcremer
Because they sell PDF creation tools:
[https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat.html?promoid=C12Y324...](https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat.html?promoid=C12Y324S)

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GGfpc
I really enjoy Okular, it's fast, looks good and has smooth-scrolling (looking
at you Foxit). However, I have been forced to use Foxit when dealing with
annotations, because a lot of times Okular simply cannot display them if they
were created in other programs.

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sevensor
I discovered Okular late in my dissertation-writing. I was pretty thrilled to
discover that it could display annotations made with Acrobat. This was my
advisor's preferred way of interacting, since I was somehow not able to
interest him in learning git or LaTeX. At the time it was far better than
evince. I've also found that it does a better job with big complicated pdfs
produced by graphviz.

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burtonator
Okular is actually the reason I created Polar:

[https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

Well, one of the reasons.

First, if you like Okular, you're stuck if you want to run on any other
platform. It doesn't work on mobile, it doesn't work on the web, doesn't work
on Linux, MacOS or Windows [1]

Additionally, there were pretty severe bugs when I used it and there were 1-2
long outstanding bugs regarding annotations that weren't fixed for nearly a
decade.

The main issue with PDF annotations also applies. If you use PDF annotations
it means mutating the PDF which has all sorts of problems.

I've had issues where you're working on Okular or Preview or Acrobat and then
try to use another app and your annotations simply don't work or the PDF is
corrupted in some weird way.

Having an immutable PDF solves that problem which is the avenue I went with in
Polar.

Polar supports Web + Linux + Windows + MacOS. It also supports annotation
without mutating the PDF and it's VERY hackable since it's just based on
Typescript - which is one of the features I wanted.

We're very close from having mobile too and just need to clean up some CSS.

Anyway.. would LOVE your feedback if you play with Polar and find it doesn't
perfectly nail your use case.

I'm actively developing it now and I'm pushing 1-2 releases per week.

1\. My understanding is that while it DOES work on these platforms - it
doesn't work WELL on them. Last time I checked there was no download for
Windows or MacOS and you had to install the full KDE for these platforms.

~~~
anoncake
You found that you had to download too much bloat to use Okular so you made an
Electron app? Im pretty sure you dont have to download all of KDE to use one
of its apps, just the package manager and the libraries Okular uses.

~~~
jellicle
"apt install okular" requires an extra 195 packages and 194MB of space on a
Ubuntu machine I have handy.

It's not all of KDE, but...

~~~
detaro
Somehow I don't find 194 MB that bad if the proposed alternative suggests a
197 MB download as "probably easiest to install", but why let details like
that let an opportunity to promote your project over someone elses go to
waste... If someone with a Debian box handy wants to try how much in
dependencies the .deb pulls in...?

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TeMPOraL
> _You have so many rounds of back and forth on collateral that it’s clear you
> don’t have strategic alignment and it’s spilling over into stifling
> execution._

What does this sentence even mean? Could someone ELI5 it to me?

~~~
conroydave
you're changing the content so much that its clear the group doesn't have
agreement on what should be created, so much that it's now spilling over to
getting stuff out the door

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northernjames
For PDF annotating/collaboration, Xodo for the web deserves to be better
known: [https://www.xodo.com/app/#/](https://www.xodo.com/app/#/)

It displays/creates standard PDF annotations. You can collaborate with people
online if you want, or annotate files on your computer without uploading them
to a server (it uses emscripten/wasm/pnacl client side).

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nilsocket
I used to use Okular before.

Even now when ever I try to use it, it is slow, and e eating up a lot of ram,
scrolling doesn't look smooth enough. Whenever loading a new page, load time
is clearly visible it used to work fine back in 2017.

My main desktop environment is KDE Plasma but I use evince for now while
reading.

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johnchristopher
Okular is the only PDF reader that could handle PDF on my previous slow
computer. Windows was a breeze but I always had problems with PDF on linux
before I could settle for okular.

It bugs me that it's easier to select text with the underlining tool than with
the select tool.

~~~
blattimwind
PDFs are kinda weird because there are somehow always PDFs that slow one
viewer down but usually another viewer is fine. E.g. I have PDFs where Okular
takes a couple seconds to render the first page, while LLPP renders it much
faster. And vice versa -- which is the confusing part.

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redman25
I work in publishing and we use PDFs extensively for proofing manuscripts. If
you ever need to compare across PDFs, I created a small tool for it:

[https://www.parepdf.com/](https://www.parepdf.com/)

~~~
dfc
I really like diffpdf:
[http://www.qtrac.eu/diffpdf.html](http://www.qtrac.eu/diffpdf.html)

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pmoriarty
How does okular compare to zathura (which can use mupdf or poppler as its pdf
backend)?

~~~
MegaDeKay
Okular is to Zathura as Acrobat Reader is to Vim. :-)

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Cactus2018
My favorite tool for extracting data from PDFs: Tabula
[https://github.com/tabulapdf/tabula](https://github.com/tabulapdf/tabula)

------
friednslip
One tool that doesn't seem to get the attention it deserves is Marginnote. I
spent a bit more money than I should have on it, but in terms of reading,
annotating, and making notes from PDF's I don't think there's anything else
even close. I particularly love the ability to create a mindmap, flashcards
for spaced repetition, and native export to evernote.
[https://www.marginnote.com/](https://www.marginnote.com/)

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seltzered_
For those wanting to try okular on macos, it seems easier to setup via
homebrew ( [https://brew.sh](https://brew.sh) ). The steps are:

$ brew tap kde-mac/kde

$ brew install cpanminus (needed for KDE-mac/kde/kf5-kdoctools)

$ cpanm URI

$ brew install okular

Then go make coffee while things compile.

source: [https://github.com/KDE-mac/homebrew-kde](https://github.com/KDE-
mac/homebrew-kde)

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prolepunk
When I'm on windows I'm always puzzled about how Adobe Reader is slow and has
tons of features I will never going to use. Just let me get to duplex printing
dialog, adobe!!!

I mostly use Okular for navigation and printing, but it also has a great
feature of letting you select area of the document and either copy selected
text or image into a buffer. This doesn't sound like a lot, but it makes
working with pdf documents really comfortable.

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ausjke
I use okular on gnome when I absolutely need to annotate the PDF, I could not
find other alternatives. okular is heavy and slow but it gets the job done
when it's needed. I hope calibre can support annotations one day for the file
formats it supports.

99% of the time I use evince to read PDFs though.

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drenvuk
Okular is also wonderful for epubs if you documents ever move to that format.

~~~
MegaDeKay
Okular is great for epubs in that it can show them as a single document
whereas most programs break them in to chapters that can't be searched across.
However, it can also be terribly slow on some epub files even on a fast PC
[0]. It also has problems rendering some files that other readers like
epubreader have no problem with.

[0]
[https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359932](https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359932)

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fithisux
Yes yes yes and I am very thankful to the KDE on Windows builds programs.

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EvgeniyZh
If only there was tool which would render my annotations in TeX, it'd make
reading papers so simpler. Meanwhile, Okular

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bctnry
Okular is awesome for reading .djvu file as well. Love it.

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emgee_1
On Emacs use pdftools. Qed.

~~~
michaelmrose
I love emacs but pdftools is kind of meh. You need it for pdf tools and a
different addon to read epubs that works differently.

Then it uses a lot of memory, scrolls a little slow, and doesn't remember your
place in a document.

Zathura remembers your place and reads epubs and pdfs while using less ram.
Conversion between epubs and pdf seems to preserve the text but often results
in ugly docs that are less pleasant to read so a good solution needs to
support both.

I would love someone to improve document reading to the point where I COULD
use emacs for document reading.

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maggotbrain
This is a terribly written article. Needs some serious editing.

"You have so many rounds of back and forth on collateral that it’s clear you
don’t have strategic alignment and it’s spilling over into stifling execution.
Hate to say it, but the tools aren’t the problem here."

What does this even mean???

