Fast PDF File Viewing

[Amit Uttamchandani-3]

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.

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.

Anyways, does anyone have any ideas regarding this? Any experiences in
fast PDF viewing?

Thanks,
Amit


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[Chris Burkhardt]

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

Are your machines comparable processor- and RAM-wise?

(sorry for not answering your actual question)

- chris


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[Ron Johnson]

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On 07/14/08 21:20, Chris Burkhardt wrote:
> Amit Uttamchandani wrote:
>> In comparison to a colleague's acrobat reader on windows, his acrobat
>> reader performs a lot faster.
>
> Are your machines comparable processor- and RAM-wise?
>
> (sorry for not answering your actual question)

And you know that Windows Acroread is (should be) highly tuned.

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

"Kittens give Morbo gas.  In lighter news, the city of New New
York is doomed."
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[Bret Busby]

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?

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.

--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
  you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
   Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
   "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
   A Trilogy In Four Parts",
   written by Douglas Adams,
   published by Pan Books, 1992

....................................................


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[Mark Neidorff]

On Monday 14 July 2008 10:20 pm, Chris Burkhardt wrote:
> Amit Uttamchandani wrote:
> > In comparison to a colleague's acrobat reader on windows, his acrobat
> > reader performs a lot faster.
>
> Are your machines comparable processor- and RAM-wise?
>
> (sorry for not answering your actual question)
>
> - chris

On windows acrobat preloads part of the program on boot.  (It just sits taking
up ram waiting for you to use it)  That's why it appears to start much more
quickly.


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[Arthur A]

Mark Neidorff wrote:

> On Monday 14 July 2008 10:20 pm, Chris Burkhardt wrote:
>> Amit Uttamchandani wrote:
>>> In comparison to a colleague's acrobat reader on windows, his acrobat
>>> reader performs a lot faster.
>> Are your machines comparable processor- and RAM-wise?
>>
>> (sorry for not answering your actual question)
>>
>> - chris
>
> On windows acrobat preloads part of the program on boot.  (It just sits taking
> up ram waiting for you to use it)  That's why it appears to start much more
> quickly.
>
>

I think the issue isn't so much with how fast the program starts up (I have a
hard time believing even with preload it loads faster), rather, it's likely more
to do with the caching that adobe does in the background of pages you haven't
yet tried to view. I suspect, though I honestly haven't looked into it, that
adobe caches pages a lot more while xpdf or evince or what have you simply load
it upon request.

Perhaps this is an avenue to explore further.


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[Jörg-Volker Peetz-3]

Amit Uttamchandani wrote:
<snip>
>
> 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.
>
<snip>
On another system, which has FreeType2 libraries and the according development
packages (package name in lenny, as an example, libfreetype6-dev) I configured
xpdf 3.02 with the following switches, a.o.,

--with-freetype2-library=/usr/lib
--with-freetype2-includes=/usr/include/freetype2

--
Regards,
Jörg-Volker.


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[Amit Uttamchandani-3]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:20:30 -0600
Chris Burkhardt <chris@...> wrote:

> Amit Uttamchandani wrote:
> > In comparison to a colleague's acrobat reader on windows, his
> > acrobat reader performs a lot faster.
>
> Are your machines comparable processor- and RAM-wise?
>
> (sorry for not answering your actual question)
>
> - chris
>
>

Hi,

Sorry for not posting more details...

The machines we have are the same.

Specs:

 * CPU: 2x Intel Pentium D 3.40 GHz
 * RAM: 1GB
 * Graphics: ATI Radeon Xpress 200

Thanks,
Amit


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[Amit Uttamchandani-3]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:44:52 -0500
Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@...> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 07/14/08 21:20, Chris Burkhardt wrote:
> > Amit Uttamchandani wrote:
> >> In comparison to a colleague's acrobat reader on windows, his
> >> acrobat reader performs a lot faster.
> >
> > Are your machines comparable processor- and RAM-wise?
> >
> > (sorry for not answering your actual question)
>
> And you know that Windows Acroread is (should be) highly tuned.
>
> - --
> Ron Johnson, Jr.
> Jefferson LA  USA
>
> "Kittens give Morbo gas.  In lighter news, the city of New New
> York is doomed."
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAkh8DyQACgkQS9HxQb37Xmej8wCfS4NTUuLK52MCAzQU000Yz6ny
> 3WcAoId/SGl4qme9DTByerjKnt92/z0o
> =f/wc
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>

Yes, you are right it is probably tuned. So far xpdf is great, I mean
the pdfs launch a lot faster and it generally is better in performance
except for the large file described

According to pdfinfo:

Page size:      2588.16 x 1578.84 pts
File size:      3619630 bytes

Thanks,
Amit


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[Amit Uttamchandani-3]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:35:29 +0300
Arthur A <arthur.machlas@...> wrote:

> Mark Neidorff wrote:
> > On Monday 14 July 2008 10:20 pm, Chris Burkhardt wrote:
> >> Amit Uttamchandani wrote:
> >>> In comparison to a colleague's acrobat reader on windows, his
> >>> acrobat reader performs a lot faster.
> >> Are your machines comparable processor- and RAM-wise?
> >>
> >> (sorry for not answering your actual question)
> >>
> >> - chris
> >
> > On windows acrobat preloads part of the program on boot.  (It just
> > sits taking up ram waiting for you to use it)  That's why it
> > appears to start much more quickly.
> >
> >
>
> I think the issue isn't so much with how fast the program starts up
> (I have a hard time believing even with preload it loads faster),
> rather, it's likely more to do with the caching that adobe does in
> the background of pages you haven't yet tried to view. I suspect,
> though I honestly haven't looked into it, that adobe caches pages a
> lot more while xpdf or evince or what have you simply load it upon
> request.
>
> Perhaps this is an avenue to explore further.
>
>

Yes that is exactly what is probably going on. Because with xpdf it
takes around ~2 seconds to redraw/cache when i scroll through the
document.

I tried exploring this further and it seems like it is an issue with
the cairo backend. Compiling cairo with OpenGL support looks like a
promising approach.

http://www.cairographics.org/OpenGL/

Amit


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[Amit Uttamchandani-3]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:17:51 +0800 (WST)
Bret Busby <bret@...> 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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[Kamaraju S Kusumanchi-2]

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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