 | |
_6_Windows_10.png) Sumatra PDF 3.5.2 (64-bit) on Windows 10 | |
| Original author(s) | Krzysztof Kowalczyk[1] |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Krzysztof Kowalczyk, Simon Bünzli and others[1] |
| Initial release | 1 June 2006; 18 years ago (2006-06-01) |
| Stable release | |
| Preview release | 3.6.16779 / 23 August 2024; 8 months ago (2024-08-23) |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C,C++ |
| Operating system | Windows Vista and newer |
| Size | 7.1MB (32-bit), 7.9MB (64-bit) |
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Type | Document viewer |
| License | GNU General Public License v3 |
| Website | sumatrapdfreader.org |
Sumatra PDF is afree and open-sourcedocument viewer that supports manydocument formats including:Portable Document Format (PDF),Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM),DjVu,EPUB,FictionBook (FB2),MOBI,PRC,Open XML Paper Specification (OpenXPS, OXPS, XPS), andComic Book Archive file (CB7, CBR, CBT, CBZ).[3] IfGhostscript is installed, it supportsPostScript files. It is developed exclusively forMicrosoft Windows.
Sumatra has a minimalist design, with its simplicity attained at the cost of extensive features. For rendering PDFs, it uses theMuPDF library.[4]
Sumatra was designed for portable use, as it consists of one file with no external dependencies, making it usable from an external USB drive, needing no installation.[5] This classifies it as aportable application to read PDF, XPS, DjVu, CHM, eBooks (ePub, FictionBook, Mobi PDB and TCR), Comic Book (CBZ, CBR, CBT, and CB7) and image formats (BMP,GIF,JPEG, JPEG 2000,JPEG XR,PNG, TGA, andWebP).[6] Sumatra can also supportPostScript, PJL, and HEIF formats via external software.[6]
As is characteristic of many portable applications, Sumatra uses little disk space.[3] In 2009, Sumatra 1.0 had a 1.21 MB setup file,[7] compared toAdobe Reader 9.5's 32 MB.[8] In January, 2017, the latest version of SumatraPDF, 3.1.2, had a single 6.1 Mb executable file; in comparison, Adobe Reader XI used 320 MB of disk space.[9]
The PDF format'suse restrictions were implemented in Sumatra 0.6,[10] preventing users from printing or copying from documents that the document author restricts, a form ofdigital rights management. Kowalczyk stated, "I decided that [Sumatra] will honor PDF creator's wishes."[11][12][13] Other open-source readers likeOkular andEvince make this optional, andDebian patches software to remove these restrictions, in accord with its principles of interoperability and re-use.[14]
Through version 1.1, printing was achieved by rasterizing each PDF page to a bitmap. This resulted in very large spool files and slow printing.[15][16]
Since version 0.9.1, hyperlinks embedded in PDF documents have been supported.[10]
Sumatra ismultilingual, with 69 community-contributed translations.[17]
Sumatra supports SyncTeX, a bidirectional method to synchronizeTeX source and PDF output produced bypdfTeX orXeTeX.[10]
Sumatra PDF is written mainly by two contributors: Krzysztof Kowalczyk and Simon Bünzli.[1] Thesource code is developed in two programming languages, mostly inC, with some components inC++. The source code is provided with support forMicrosoft Visual Studio.[18]
As it was first designed whenWindows XP was the current version of Windows, Sumatra initially had some incompatibilities with earlier versions of Windows. Support forWindows 95,98 andME has since been removed.[19]
Initially, Kowalczyk did not release a 64-bit version of Sumatra, indicating that while it might offer slightly more speed and available memory, he believed at that time that it would greatly add to user confusion and that the benefits would not outweigh the potential costs.[20] However, some users requested 64-bit builds of Sumatra and other developers had compiled unofficial 64-bit builds[21] which loaded documents faster than the 32-bit builds. However, the official builds' developer had requested that unofficial builds not bear the 'Sumatra' name.[22] In October 2015, an official 64-bit version of Sumatra was released.[23]
The Sumatra source code was originally hosted onGoogle Code. Due to US export legal restrictions, it was unavailable "in countries on the United StatesOffice of Foreign Assets Control sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria."[24][25] The source code is currently hosted onGitHub.[26]
The first version of Sumatra PDF, designated version 0.1, was based onXpdf 0.2 and was released on 1 June 2006. It switched toPoppler from version 0.2. In version 0.4, it changed toMuPDF for more speed[4] and better support for the Windows platform. Poppler remained as alternative engine for a time, and from version 0.6 to 0.8 it was automatically used to render pages that MuPDF failed to load. Poppler was removed in version 0.9, released on 10 August 2008.
In July 2009, Sumatra PDF changed its license fromGNU GPLv2 toGNU GPLv3 to match the same license change on MuPDF.[27]
Since version 0.9.4, Sumatra supports theJPEG 2000 format.[citation needed]
Version 1.0 was released on 17 November 2009, after more than three years of cumulative development. Version 2.0 was released on 2 April 2012, over two years after the release of version 1.0.[10]
In 2007, the first unofficial translations were released by Lars Wohlfahrt[28] before Sumatra PDF got official multi-language support.
In October 2015, version 3.1 introduced a 64-bit version, in addition to their original 32-bit version.[23][29]
The author has indicated that the choice of the name "Sumatra" is not a tribute to the Island ofSumatra orcoffee, stating that there is no particular reasoning behind the name.[30]
The graphics design of Sumatra is a tribute to the cover of theWatchmen graphic novel byAlan Moore andDave Gibbons.[31]
Sumatra has attracted acclaim for its speed and simplicity,[32] for beingportable,[33] itskeyboard shortcuts, and itsopen-source development.[31]
At one time theFree Software Foundation Europe recommended Sumatra PDF, but then removed its recommendation in February 2014, due to the presence of the non-freely licensedunrar code in Sumatra. As foundation representative Heiki Ojasild explained, "while they continue to make use of the non-free library, SumatraPDF cannot be recognised asFree Software."[34][35][36][37] Unrar was eventually replaced with a free alternative in version 3.0, making it 100% free software.[38]
The Sumatra PDF Viewer is a tiny open source portable reader that opens PDF's in the blink of an eye. Bloat and startup time is a major drawback toAdobe Reader, so we fled to the faster arms ofFoxit Reader long ago. However, at 850KB, Sumatra is way slimmer than FoxIt.
Sumatra PDF is a fairly young project aiming to create a small, simple and fast PDF viewer. It main features are showing PDFs and starting up really fast - and it does both just perfectly.
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