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<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>I was recently forced to spend significant time (months!) in the purgative desolation that is MS Windows.</p> <p>In this hellscape, your options for PDF readers amount to:</p> <p>"<em>1: No bloat. 2: No spyware/adware. 3: Good UX -- Choose any two.</em>"</p> <p>It made me appreciate just how great Okular is. In my experience, it has a low memory footprint, is snappy and responsive even with large files, and the UX is a dream. Seriously; you wouldn't expect a document viewing utility to <em>look good</em> in and of itself, but Okular does.</p> <p>But my favorite parts are the little touches you don't even notice, but that just make the whole experience... "luxurious" is the best word I can think of. Some examples of what I love in this regard:</p> <ul> <li>When you resize the application window, the sidebar resizes proportionally. This doesn't sound too exciting <em>prima facie</em>, but I love using the sidebar's "Thumbnails" tab to navigate, and seeing them dynamically grow and shrink with <strong>no perceivable slowdown</strong> is really enjoyable.</li> <li>Rounded ends on the highlighter tool simulates the look of actual highlighter pens.</li> <li><em>Settings -> Configure -> Performance Tuning</em> makes Okular completely potato-friendly.</li> <li>The option to open new files as either separate application windows or tabs in a single window.</li> <li>Drag & drop a folder containing images into Okular (or right-click an image folder and say "open with Okular") and you now have an image viewer that lets you scroll through all of the images as though they were a single PDF document.</li> <li>Highlight text. Right-click. "Speak Text"</li> <li>On the main toolbar's navigation area (where it says, for example, "25 of 100"), click on the number representing the total number of pages. You get a little popup with a scrollbar, allowing you to scroll-select the desired page number instead of having to type it. This isn't decadence, it's accessibility. A really great touch for mobility-restricted users.</li> <li>Being able to view PDF, epub, CBR/CBZ comics, and images in one app.</li> </ul> <p>I could probably carry on all day, but you get the idea. I know that some of these features aren't necessarily exclusive to Okular, but they're all <em>present</em> in Okular in an unintrusive, elegant, and bloat-free way.</p> <p>I don't meant to objectively claim that Okular is the best document viewer out there. I can't make that claim, because I haven't tested that many other document viewers. The reason I haven't done that is because there's nothing Okular hasn't been able to do for me.</p> <p>P.S. I know now that Okular <em>is</em> available on Windows, but by the time I realized that, I had already moved back to an OS where any perceived enjoyment of the desktop experience isn't contingent on Stockholm Syndrome.</p> </div><!-- SC_ON -->   submitted by   <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ROT26_only_thx"> /u/ROT26_only_thx </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/qy1m1b/id_just_like_to_give_a_shoutout_to_okular_for/">[link]</a></span>   <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/qy1m1b/id_just_like_to_give_a_shoutout_to_okular_for/">[comments]</a></span> |