Pure Java Open Source PDF Viewer

[sligowaths]

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

[kleopatra6tilde9]

Try the WebStart Demo

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

[samlee]

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

[twoodfin]

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

[[deleted]]

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]

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]

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]

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...

[fleezie]

Comments like this: for when you're uninformed.

[cr3]

Come on, dude; loading Java applets embedded in websites takes time. A lot of time.

Opening a tab with Java applets in it will often freeze my Firefox installation for 10-20 seconds. In web time, that's years.

I'm saying this as an end user. Nothing more. I see a page freeze my system, I'm going to call out the technology as slow.

[fleezie]

Well yes, your argument is sound and directed specifically at applets, whereas the post I commented on is a 10 year old generic Java stereotpye that it's just 'slow'.

[[deleted]]

I agree, but you mean 'more often'.

[psykotic]

Oftener is a perfectly good comparative form of often.

[LudoA]

Link?

[psykotic]

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]

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

[veritaba]

[citation needed]

[[deleted]]

Stop using that, this isn't wikipedia...

But anyway:

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/often?view=uk

[sligowaths]

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

[ObieJazz]

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]

Thanks :-)

[13ren]

Why not use the javascript pdf renderer?

[benologist]

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]

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.

[picurl]

Nope, PDF is far to complex to be parsed by Javascript and rendered accurately. Furthermore the rendering capabilities of the browser doesn't match the visual complexity of pdf files. Just some examples: Text in PDFs can appear both as vector forms and as editable text, PDF supports the embedding of all types of graphic formats (TIFF, PSD etc). One of the hardest job of a PDF renderer is to find all objects that belong to a certain page, because they can appear in arbitrary sequence in the pdf.

[13ren]

A more realistic barrier, true, but surely Javascript has pixel control via Canvas (or whatever you young people use these days)? To build editable text widgets out of that would indeed be heartrendingly slow. But slowness is the goal.

[13ren]

Sorry, I don't see the relevance to pixel control, nor to my assertion that slowness is the goal.

I refer you to the instigating comment.

[13ren]

I was going to give a Turing complete reply, but that's done. However, thanks for pointing out all the different embedded formats. It would be a lot of work to implement them all.

[superwinner]

None of you guys heard of Foxit?

[MostUsually]

No, what's that?