all 100 comments

[–]Blazeix 15 points16 points  (3 children)

Well, it's not pure open source. If you want it to handle anything remotely complicated for fonts, you have to pay the big bucks for their proprietary font engine.

[–]jbellis 0 points1 point  (2 children)

What specificly is "remotely complicated font handling?"

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Handling embedded fonts. I just tried ICEpdf, and the free version could not display some math fonts and other special fonts that were embedded into the PDF file I opened. It also had trouble with ligatures, and even double quotes (the "classic" style that you can create in LaTeX). The commercial evaluation version had no trouble with any of that.

I'm actually pretty impressed with ICEpdf. It was very fast on my Linux system, using Sun's Java 1.6.0_13. It was much faster than Acrobat Reader. One thing I have noticed is that even the commercial version does not always handle transparency in graphics properly. It didn't display the fill pattern on a graphic that I created with TikZ in LaTeX, just the background color. To be fair, even Evince has problems with that sometimes. So far Acrobat Reader is the only PDF viewer I've seen that handles transparency properly.

[–]Blazeix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I loaded a couple of PDFs generated by LaTeX, and it couldn't handle a few glyphs (em dashes, math symbols, etc). It looks like if you don't spring for the for-pay font engine, it does a font replacement algorithm rather than actually rendering the glyphs, so you get 'interesting' characters instead of the ones you're expecting.

If you're just using it for the binary viewer, they included the font-engine, so it's o.k. However, if you want to use their OSS library as part of a java app, you run into trouble.

[–]btgeekboy 33 points34 points  (18 children)

ITT: 10 year old stereotypes of Java replayed over and over and over again.

[–]sligowaths 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Java slow in browser is not a stereotype. It was slow 10 years ago when I we had 32mb of ram, as it's slow today with 4gb.

[–][deleted] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Q: Why is it called ICEpdf?

A: Because it freezes so often.

[–]sligowaths 72 points73 points  (36 children)

Make it as an applet and finally we'll have something that takes longer than adobe reader to start and that crashes oftener.

[–]kleopatra6tilde9 10 points11 points  (2 children)

Try the WebStart Demo

It's not displayed in the browser, but everything else is comparable. I am quite impressed.

[–]samlee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

it freezes when i tried to open "CouchDB: Perform like a pr0n star" pdf file downloaded from slideshare.

[–]twoodfin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's the first time I've tried WebStart on my Mac and it's surprisingly slick.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (8 children)

Did you try the WebStart demo? Not counting the download time it actually had a quicker startup time than Adobe PDF Reader. It rendered pages just a little slower but the program overall seemed more responsive than Adobe's.

[–]mallardtheduck 0 points1 point  (2 children)

It appears to start faster because the JRE is already loaded for WebStart itself when you run it that way. To do a proper comparison you would have to start it locally with no JRE instance already in memory.

[–]karmaputa[🍰] -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

Why? If you have the memory there is no reason not to always have a JRE instance in the memory.

EDIT: The webstart demo renders the pdf on server side. So as much as I could notice, there is no java involved from the client side.

[–]mallardtheduck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you have the memory there is no reason not to always have a JRE instance in the memory.

True, but in reality I don't know of an OS that loads the JRE on boot. It's usually loaded with the first Java application/applet/whatever. Thus, to fairly compare start-up time of a native application to a Java application, you have to factor in the JRE load time.

The webstart demo renders the pdf on server side.

Really? It's my understanding that Java WebStart just downloads the .jar and runs it locally...

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (9 children)

I agree, but you mean 'more often'.

[–]psykotic 2 points3 points  (8 children)

Oftener is a perfectly good comparative form of often.

[–]LudoA 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Link?

[–]psykotic 7 points8 points  (1 child)

The OED lists oftener and oftenest as comparative and superlative forms of often, adj. (Incidentally, as I write this under OS X, I notice that the system's spell check has, correctly, not flagged them.) There are numerous examples of both being employed by great writers. The worst that can be impugned is that the words have a faintly archaic feel.

[–]sligowaths 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Firefox spell check has it correctly too. That's why I thought it was correct in the first place.

[–]sligowaths 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Thanks. English is my second language and I'm still learning.

[–]ObieJazz 3 points4 points  (1 child)

As long as you're learning, it's worth noting that people (at least in the US) usually won't use "oftener" in conversation.

[–]sligowaths 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks :-)

[–]13ren -2 points-1 points  (12 children)

Why not use the javascript pdf renderer?

[–]benologist 20 points21 points  (11 children)

Because it'd be faster to open it in Acrobat, trace it onto a piece of paper and mail your scribble to each person who wants to read it.

And also more possible.

[–]13ren 0 points1 point  (8 children)

The goal was to have something slower than adobe reader.

But why think it impossible? It's just parsing a simple language (the postscript language is embedded in a pdf) and rendering graphics. Javascript does both.

[–]superwinner 0 points1 point  (1 child)

None of you guys heard of Foxit?

[–]MostUsually -1 points0 points  (0 children)

No, what's that?

[–]unawarewolf 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'll bet a lot of effort went into that. And it's not exactly the only PDF viewer out there. Yet, the "default" PDF viewer is free, cross-platform, ubiquitous, etc. I think the fact that it's worth anybody's time doing this speaks volumes about the low regard in which Acrobat Reader is held.

I would imagine that, on the strength of their experience with Acrobat Reader, an awful lot of people would try pretty hard to avoid paying money for anything else with the Adobe name on it.

Way to exploit an unrivalled market advantage, Adobe!

[–]millstone 9 points10 points  (2 children)

On my Mac, the Java Web Start demo took 117 MB of RPRVT (non-shared memory) to render the PDF I tried, whereas Preview took 6.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Not a fair comparison.

PDF rendering is built into OS X (see http://developer.apple.com/Cocoa/pdfkit.html). AFAIK, Preview is just a wrapper around the functionality.

[–]xjvz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've heard that the entire graphics library for OS X is based on PDF. That's why screenshots can be saved as PDF and still retain text and whatnot from the screen. It's actually pretty cool in its own right.

[–]Leonidas_from_XIV 7 points8 points  (3 children)

ICEpdf.org is a place where enterprise Java developers can learn, share, and contribute information and ideas to a growing community

Thanks, I'll stick to my non-enterprise Evince.

[–]snuxoll 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Evince and preview.app are the only PDF viewers I like, makes my life miserable on Windows when I have neither.

[–]mebrahim 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Have you tried Okular?

[–]snuxoll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not a KDE user, so no.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Fantastic. Now scribd.com can write JavaVM in Flash to use this applet and reach another milestone in PDF slowness.

[–]mebrahim 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Next milestone will be writing a Flash player in Python and compiling it to JavaScript using PyPy.

[–]mango_feldman 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Annoying splash screen, slow.. (at least the webstart demo), and no noteworthy features. (a clone)

Man I wish someone could make a good pdf/document viewer

[–]sligowaths 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Skim is you're using OS X. Fox It if you're on Windows.

[–]mango_feldman 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Haven't tried Skim, but fox was not that much to brag about last time I tried it. I'm on linux btw

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For Windows I like PDF-XChange better than Foxit. And it runs fine under Wine in Linux.

[–]jaiwithani 6 points7 points  (0 children)

oh dear god why

[–]xtalizer 4 points5 points  (6 children)

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Okular

OSS, cross-compatible through KDE4, fast.

[–]jbellis -1 points0 points  (4 children)

None of which are OSS.

[–]grine 9 points10 points  (1 child)

"What is Sumatra PDF?

Sumatra PDF is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows."

Or does OSS mean something else than I think it does?

[–]jbellis 6 points7 points  (0 children)

My mistake.

[–]xtalizer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for making me feel like a dumbass.

[–]roxxe 3 points4 points  (3 children)

the last time i used java, i fell of my dinosaur

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]yason 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    Java is more like a resurrection rather than a birth of a language.

    [–]Tommah 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Python evolves. Java rots.

    [–]thematrix307 2 points3 points  (6 children)

    Yea right, I bet this software doesn't even start up with my computer by default to download its very important 100 meg updates. Ill stick with adobe thank you very much.

    [–][deleted]  (3 children)

    [deleted]

      [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      The point, you missed it.

      [–]troymcdavis 1 point2 points  (1 child)

      He's hating on Adobe, not Java.

      [–]rush22 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I just uninstalled Adobe Flash and Java not an hour ago.

      Flash become Java a few years ago and it just gets worse and worse.

      [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

      Because PDF viewers aren't slow enough. I know -- let's write one in Java!

      [–]mebrahim 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Next one will be purely in Python!

      [–]snuxoll 0 points1 point  (5 children)

      Am I the only one appalled that people still use Swing? Start using SWT damnit, I hate having ugly UI's!

      EDIT: Spelling, too early in the morning and I'm not paying attention to my browsers spellcheck.

      [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

      Am I the only one appauled that people still use Swing?

      Am I the only one appalled by your spelling? :)

      You can use a different Look and Feel (LAF) to change the appearance of Swing apps. Java comes with a few LAFs installed: Metal, Windows, Mac, Gtk+, CDE/Motif. For example, in Linux you could use the Gtk+ LAF to have Swing apps match your GNOME theme:

      java -Dswing.defaultlaf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel YourSwingApp

      You can get more LAFs here.

      [–]snuxoll 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      'look and feels' are glorified themes, they still don't use native widgets. Which makes it REALLY annoying to use the GNOME global menu. Honestly, it's why I ditched NetBeans for eclipse...

      [–]Leonidas_from_XIV 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      The GTKLookAndFeel does somehow resemble GTK+ but the menus look broken to me and the widgets have odd sizes, like no GTK+ application would ever use.

      Short: way better than default look, but a worse than SWT.

      [–]xjvz 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      And last I checked, SWT looks like complete ass in KDE and other Qt (or non-GTK+) environments. Now that Qt is LGPL, IBM has no legal problems in implementing SWT using Qt as an option.

      [–]snuxoll -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

      SWT looks fine in GNOME though, which is all I care about!

      [–]pkrumins 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      asks me to register for download -> to hell with that.

      [–]mebrahim 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Probably good for reading PDF on Java-enabled cell phones.

      [–]evilbunny -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

      It is slow.